


Found Cat

by bomberqueen17



Series: Lost & Found [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: BB-8 Ships It, Cat BB-8, Finn POV, Finn's Mysterious Past, Gen, I apparently only write AUs where the hot neighbor lives upstairs, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Miscommunication, Modern AU, Neighbors, Possible alcoholism, Sharing a Bed, Stormpilot, city living AU, found cat, lost cat, meet cute, rey has like two lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 02:39:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8310697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: Finn's newly-settled in his first real apartment, and a stray cat turns up. She has a collar, and a tag, so he calls the number on the tag.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My sister texted me this real-life story she'd had about her cat and her neighbor, and i thought it sounded like a perfect meet-cute. And I was going to write an "imagine your OTP" post, but then instead I did the imagining, and someone had recently complained that nobody writes Stormpilot anymore, so...  
> Sorry if this is rough, I kind of wrote-and-posted on impulse.

It was really Finn’s first apartment on his own. It was cute, all exposed brick and quaint plaster and antique woodwork and stuff, and he was pretty sure it was objectively cute, but he had nothing to really base his judgement on. He’d never had a place of his own before.

He sort of didn’t believe in it, and sort of kept feeling like it was going to be taken away. The first week, he didn’t really unpack. It was only when Rey came over and started unpacking boxes for him that he joined in.

She was the one that pointed out that he had a back door. She opened it, and they discovered the little porch together. The porch had a roof, and she craned her neck and pointed out that it was clearly a balcony for the upstairs tenant. Finn went tentatively out and stood in the yard and looked up, and could see that there were potted plants and chairs and things up there. He didn’t know anything about his upstairs neighbor, but the potted plants were all in brightly-colored, mismatched little pots, and looked sort of leafy and not decorative, like maybe they were herbs for cooking. There was a garland of what looked like little flower-shaped lights.

“Bet it’s a girl,” Rey said, and went back inside to unpack more boxes. Finn really didn’t have enough things to fill the tiny one-bedroom apartment, and his furniture was all either from charity shops or made out of crates, but at least there were places to sit and his bed was actually made now, instead of the sleeping bag he’d spread out over the mattress.

“You live here,” Rey said, “and it’s yours now, and nobody’s going to take it away.”

“And I won’t have to leave,” Finn said, but he couldn’t really believe it.

But there was no point living on the edge of his seat, so he bought groceries, and during that second week, started teaching himself how to cook. He got himself a folding chair and put it on the porch so he could sit and look at the back yard, but he didn’t know yet how to do that.

He did discover an ashtray with fairly fresh butts in it, which told him what the previous tenant had used this porch for.

Finn settled in, and started to get used to the neighborhood. There were four units in this building, the other two in the front. He caught a couple of glimpses of neighbors; one woman introduced herself as a writer who lived in the front upper unit, and said sweetly that he shouldn’t hesitate to knock on her door if he needed anything. He couldn’t imagine what sort of extremity would move him to do such a thing, but it was sweet of her to offer. The other neighbors, he wasn’t sure of, but there was a strikingly handsome dark-haired man who he saw near the front door a time or two, but never met on the stairs. The man had a really gorgeous jawline and Finn wanted to look at him a lot more, but it was rude to stare, and he was always either on his phone or in conversation with someone and Finn was too shy to call out to him anyway. What would he say?

“You’re getting better,” Rey observed. “You don’t look like you’re expecting to get shot, anymore.”

“I’m catching up to where I am,” Finn said, and showed off some of his new cooking skills. He decided not to tell her about admiring the beautiful man; he wasn’t ready to discuss that aspect of himself with anyone yet, not in this new life.

One morning, about a month after he moved in, he woke gasping from a paralyzing nightmare just before dawn, and went out on the porch to get some air. The smells of the grass and the tree and the traffic grounded him, and he slowly came back to himself, and felt at peace, and as the sky lightened so did his heart. He understood, now, what the porch was for.

He spent a lot more time on the porch after that. Every morning before dawn, he went out and listened as the city woke up. And in the evening, he watched the light fade.

One evening as he slipped back inside and let the door clack shut behind him, he heard a noise. He went back to the door, and looked out, and the noise repeated, a little scratching sound. He looked down, and it was a cat, scratching at the corner of the door.

Bemused, he opened the door, and the cat came in with a cheerful-sounding chirrup, as if she belonged there. “Wait,” he said, stupidly, as if the cat could understand him, “you don’t live here!”

But she came in and jumped up onto his improvised couch, trilling and holding her tail upright, wriggling it in tiny little friendly-looking twitches. She was wearing a collar with a white tag sticking straight out, and he cautiously stepped closer— he really wasn’t familiar with cats— and looked at it. It had one of those QR code things, like you could scan with your phone.

“Huh,” Finn said. “You’re not a stray.”

“Mrrrup,” the cat said, leaning toward him. He thought perhaps she might want him to pet her, so he put out his hand tentatively. She cheerfully mashed her face against his hand, shamelessly using it to pet herself as she pleased, and he kept his hand steady, amused, and let her. She was very soft, and clearly well-cared-for. But she was obviously lost; she didn’t live here.

He petted her, or let her pet herself, for a while, and then went and retrieved his phone. He knew he had one of those scanning apps on his phone, but it took him forever to get it open, because the cat kept mashing herself against his hand.

“Hold still,” he said, and grabbed the tag, and tried to scan it. She was purring, noisily, and kept rubbing against his hands. He couldn’t get her to hold still.

He gave it up as a bad job for the moment, and sat down next to her. She delightedly climbed into his lap, which was alarming— she had sharp claws— but only so she could rub on him more, and after much climbing across his legs in pursuit of his hands, she finally curled herself up and lay in his lap, purring blissfully.

It was so unexpectedly delightful that he sat and petted her for a long time, enjoying how warm and soft and clearly happy she was. He wasn’t familiar with cats, at all; he’d never had anything of his own, really, had never really interacted with animals at all. But he knew from, like, movies and stuff, that it was great to have cats sit on you. So he kept petting her.

Finally she seemed to fall asleep, so he picked up his phone again and scanned the QR code on her tag.

It brought up a screen on his phone with a name and a phone number. No, two names. A photo of the cat, clearly this same cat, and the name “BB”, which apparently was the cat’s. And then under it, the name Poe Dameron, and a phone number with a local area code.

It had to be the cat’s owner’s name. Finn supposed there didn’t really have to be instructions. He hesitated a long time, though, before dialing the number. He didn’t like making phone calls, it made him anxious. But it wasn’t really done to text a stranger like that.

The phone rang twice before a man’s voice said, “Dameron,” and it took Finn a moment to recognize that was the name of the person whose phone it was.

“Oh,” Finn said, and then thought how stupid he must sound. “Uh, hi. Um.”

“Sorry, who is this?” the man said, polite but businesslike.

“I found your cat,” Finn said, stumbling awkwardly over the words. He grimaced: that was a dumb way of putting it. BB woke up, gave Finn a look he thought was perhaps disapproving— maybe she didn’t like how much noise he was making.

“Oh no,” the man said. “Which cat?” He sounded upset. “I didn’t know either one was missing!”

“Uh,” Finn said, “BB?” The cat squeaked, then jumped down from his lap. He felt strangely bereft, as if the world just wasn’t as kind a place with his lap empty.

“Tabby?” the man said. Finn wasn’t sure what that meant. The man was obviously moving, and in a moment he said, “Has to be, I _see_ the other one. Is she— how bad is it?”

“What?” Finn looked at the cat, who was prowling around his apartment as if looking for something, and then it struck him how it had sounded. “Oh! No, she’s— she’s fine, I just— she’s okay. She’s in my— she let herself in my apartment. She’s okay. I’ve been petting her so she’d settle down and let me scan the tag.”

“Oh thank God,” the man said, on a long exhale. “When you said— I thought you meant—”

“No, no,” Finn said, horrified, “I’m so sorry— no. No, I just— she’s just, she’s clearly lost, she was scratching at my door like she thinks she lives here.”

“Thank God,” the man said. “Oh, you really— you really scared me.”

“I’m so sorry,” Finn said. “Oh, I’m so— I didn’t even think about what that sounded like. No, I should’ve said she found me.”

The man laughed. “I’m just glad she’s all right,” he said.

“Has she been missing long?” Finn asked. “Er, oh, right. You said. Can’t have been long.”

“I saw her when I got home from work,” the man said. “She can’t have been gone long.”

“Does she get out a lot?” Finn asked, curious.

“There’s a cat door,” the man said. “She comes and goes as she pleases.” He was moving again. “Hm. I have a suspicion. Did you by chance move in pretty recently?”

“I,” Finn said, at a loss, “why do you ask?”

“Can you do me a favor?” the guy asked. “Go out on your porch.”

“How do you know I have a porch?” Finn asked, and the paranoia spiked suddenly. Had he made a mistake?

“Well,” the man said, and his voice was warm and amused, not at all threatening. “You must live on the first floor, unless she’s really athletic, and I’m just guessing she didn’t come to the front door of your building, not in this neighborhood. She can’t be far from my porch.”

“Okay but,” Finn said, and bit it off. He didn’t need to be paranoid here. He was safe here. He uncurled from his chair and went hesitantly to the door. The cat did not follow him. “I’m looking out at my porch now.”

“Go out on the porch,” the man said.

“Why.” Finn couldn’t help it, he had to be wary. His instincts were too high-key for this new life but he’d earned them the hard way.

“Trust me,” the man said, and there was a sweet note to it, curling upward through it, playful. Finn hadn’t been spoken to like that much in his life.

Finn slowly, carefully pushed the door open, and stepped out onto the porch. “Okay,” he said. The cat squeaked, and followed him delightedly out the door, jumping up onto the chair, and he paused to pet her. “She came out with me,” he said, and the little amusement that gave him helped push away the screaming paranoia.

“Now, look up,” the man said, and Finn realized suddenly that he could hear the man’s voice with both ears, not just his phone.

He looked up, but all he could see was the floor of the deck above him. But he went carefully to the railing, and craned his neck to look up where there was a shadow.

The man was leaning over the railing of the balcony above. “Hi,” he said, hanging up the phone and waving. “Poe Dameron. You must be the new downstairs neighbor.”

Finn laughed in pure astonishment. “How did you know?” he asked.

Poe leaned more comfortably over the railing, and it was then that Finn recognized him, even in the half-dusk: he was the beautiful dark-haired man, and his smile practically sparkled in the dark. “Justin was a smoker,” he said. “Kid that lived down there. BB learned that he’d sit out on his porch every morning and every evening, and she’d go down there and hang out with him, and he’d give her treats and stuff. I said I didn’t mind. She used to go in and hang out in his apartment if he left the door open. They were buddies. She misses him a lot, I think.”

“Aw,” Finn said. “Well. What kind of treats?”

Poe laughed. “You don’t have to feed my cat,” he said. “I promise, no matter what she says, I feed her too.”

Finn slipped his phone into his pocket, since the call was disconnected. “Well,” he said.

“Is she still in your apartment?” Poe asked. “I can come get her, if she’s bothering you.”

“She’s on the chair right here,” Finn said, “she came out with me.” He leaned farther out. “How does she get back up to your place?”

“The tree,” Poe said. “She climbs the tree.”

The yard’s sole tree was an artistically-twisted many-branched thing, and Finn craned his neck. “It’s like. It’s like two meters away from your balcony!”

“I know,” Poe said. “She jumps. It’s fuckin’ crazy, you don’t have to tell me. I didn’t think she’d do it, but she does. She jumps right between the rails, it’s insane. She’s a daredevil.”

“Has she ever fallen?” Finn asked, horrified.

“No,” Poe said, “I don’t think she has, but you know. Cats land on their feet.” He laughed, and gestured back toward the building. “My other cat fell off this balcony once. Artoo. He was fine, but he freaked the fuck out, poor thing. He only comes out on the balcony sometimes, now, to watch the birds, and he doesn’t go near the rails.”

Finn laughed wonderingly. “That’s crazy,” he said. “She just— jumps?”

“Sure does,” Poe said. He leaned over farther, and clicked his tongue. “BB!” he said. “C’mere, BB!”

BB perked up, and jumped off the chair with a little chirrup. Sure enough, she ran over to the tree, climbed it as easily as running on the flat, and disappeared. Poe leaned back against the building, and in a moment BB reappeared, flying through the air, and disappeared through the slats.

“That’s my girl,” Poe said fondly, disappearing in turn as he clearly bent to pet her. Finn could hear her squeak at him. “She’s a good jumper.”

“That’s nuts,” Finn said.

“She’s something else,” Poe said, reappearing. “Hey, I never got your name. You wanna come up here and meet Artoo too?”

It was suddenly too much. “Uh,” Finn said. “No, I— I have homework.”

“Awww. Some other time,” Poe said easily, and his teeth gleamed bright in the gathering dark as he grinned.

“Some other time,” Finn said.

“I didn’t get your name,” Poe reminded him gently.

“Oh,” Finn said. “Right. Finn! Name’s Finn.”

“Finn,” Poe said softly. “I like that. Hey, you have my number now. Call me or text me or whatever, if you need anything or if BB’s bugging you or whatever, okay?”

People were friendly here. It was hard not to be suspicious, but Finn was determined to try. “Okay,” he said.

“I’m really up at all hours,” Poe said, “so like. Don’t hesitate. And if you wanna borrow BB, you just go ahead. Just let her out when you leave, so she can come back to me. There’s a cat door up here, she can always get in or out if she wants.”

“Okay,” Finn said, smiling shyly despite himself. “Maybe I’ll borrow your cat.”

“She’s a face sleeper though,” Poe said. “Gotta warn you. She really likes to snuggle. Artoo gets territorial, drives her off, but that’s all she really wants in life is to sleep on your head. Don’t be alarmed if she tries it.”

Finn laughed at that. “Okay,” he said again.

Twenty minutes later, his phone lit up. _If you were just being polite, I won’t bug you any more, but I wanted to let you know I was serious about texting me if you need anything or just want to chat or whatever_ , Poe’s number wrote.

 _I wasn’t just being polite_ , Finn texted back. _I will._

Then he sent Rey a text. _I think I made a friend_ , he wrote.


	2. Three Times Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Looks like there's more of this after all. Still gen, and maybe slowburn.   
> Finn finally comes up to Poe's apartment, and Poe lends him books.

 

Finn got a little table to go with his folding chair on the porch, and started eating his breakfast out there every morning. The second morning, BB joined him, and he looked up on his phone what it was safe for cats to eat before he shared little bits of his egg and cheese with her. She accepted the morsels daintily, and purred and purred while he petted her.

The sixth morning, about an hour after Finn had gone back inside, Poe texted, _what are you feeding my cat_.

_I looked it up and eggs are perfectly safe_ , Finn wrote back.

_Are you sharing your breakfast with my cat?_ Poe wrote.

_I’m only giving her a little_ , Finn wrote. _She asks nicely!_

_She’s a shameless beggar, is what she is_ , Poe wrote.

Finn spent a lot of time on his porch after that, and paid a lot more attention to Poe’s comings and goings. True to his word, Poe was out at all hours, sometimes gone so early and back so late Finn only dimly registered his footfalls on the stairs, sometimes pacing around the floor in the afternoons. Sometimes Poe had people over, and more often than not, he’d text to let Finn know. Sometimes the texts said things like _Let me know if we’re too loud_ , and sometimes they said things like _if you want, you could come up too, we’re just hanging out_. The former, Finn always assured him it wasn’t a problem. As for the latter, Finn always found a reason not to. It wasn’t that he’d never go up there. It was just that it was never the right time.

If Poe was on the balcony, though, as he often was as the evenings got warmer, Finn usually found himself out on the porch, and they had a couple more conversations like that, with Poe hanging over the railing and Finn leaning to look up.

Sometimes Poe played guitar. It took Finn a while to realize that he wasn’t listening to recordings— as the weather got warmer, windows were open, Finn could hear a lot better that what he’d just assumed was recorded music was strangely repetitive, strangely interrupted, and eventually he’d figured out it was live, Poe was practicing guitar. He’d put it together already, and then one night Poe was out on the balcony doing chords, and Finn came out and stood in the middle of the yard and said, “Do you take requests?”

“Sure,” Poe said. “What do you want to hear?”

Finn laughed in delight, and then thought about it, and said, “I don’t think I know any songs you’d know.”

“Surely something,” Poe said.

Finn gazed up at him. “I can’t think of anything,” he said.

Poe laughed. “Well,” he said. “There’s probably songs about Finn McCool.”

Finn stared at him. “I don’t know what that is,” he said.

“Oh,” Poe said. “I figured you were named for him.”

Finn felt very small. “My name is a— weird thing,” he said. “There’s a weird story. I don’t know anyone else with this name.”

“Oh,” Poe said. “Well, then, I won’t sing songs about it. How about I sing something else?”

“Okay,” Finn said, and brought his chair out to where he could see better, while Poe played a couple of songs. They were beautiful, Poe was quite good, but it made Finn feel strange inside. So he made his excuses, after a polite interval, and went inside, and the music stopped, and he didn’t hear the guitar for a little while after that.

But he still went and sat out on the porch and petted BB a lot, and sometimes Poe hung over the rail and talked to him again, that grin as wide and white as ever.

“I don’t wanna be weird about this,” Poe said, after a lot of these evening chats, and enough texts that he surpassed Rey in Finn’s phone as the most frequent contact, “but if you wanna come up one of these times, Artoo is so jealous of BB and would probably love to meet you just to annoy her.”

A graceless refusal was on the tip of Finn’s tongue, but then he hesitated. Why not? Poe already knew where he lived, if he was in any danger from the man he’d already have encountered it. And by now he knew all kinds of things about Poe, and had told Poe more things about himself, in little dribs and drabs, than almost anyone knew. Things he hadn’t really known about himself. “Sure,” Finn said.

Poe grinned like the sun rising. “I’m the door right at the top of the stairs,” he said. “Come on up.”

“Okay,” Finn said. He went and got his phone, put it in his pocket, thought twice about shoes, and just went barefoot into the hall. This was how he lived now.

Poe opened the door as Finn reached the top of the flight of stairs, fending something off with his foot. “Just wait your turn, Artoo,” he said. He looked up at Finn and laughed. “Artoo always wants to get out into this hallway, and then once he’s there he doesn’t know what the hell to do, and freaks out. Come on in, pardon the mess.”

The apartment was cluttered, crammed full of furniture— a couch, a loveseat, a coffee table, a drop-leaf table with two chairs, throw pillows, blankets, and the walls nearly covered with artwork. And Artoo was a fat fluffy gray puffball, and BB came running in from the balcony as Poe eased the door shut behind Finn.

“Your apartment’s so much nicer than mine,” Finn marveled. “Look at all these books!”

Poe gave him a look. “I’ve been in that unit,” he said. “It’s plenty nice.”

“I mean,” Finn said, and waved a hand. “Stuff. You have stuff. My place just looks. It looks empty, compared to this. I don’t have— all these _books_. Poe, it’s like a library in here.”

“You just moved in,” Poe said, “give it time.” And he gave Finn a closer look. He was— he was stunning, was the thing, and it was more obvious close-up like this; his eyes were big and dark and fringed by thick dark eyelashes, and more charmingly, crinkled at the corners with evidence of a lifetime of laughter. His mouth was wide and generous, and his hair curled in perfectly-tousled dark waves, and Finn wanted to touch him.

“You’re really young, aren’t you,” Poe said. “I didn’t realize. What are you, twenty-five? Is this your first apartment?”

“Maybe,” Finn said, and opted not to correct him on the age. Close enough. “I mean. Yeah. It’s my first place. I don’t have a lot of furniture.”

Poe grinned. “Aw,” he said, “baby’s first place. Well, I mean. This place is so cluttered I can never find anything, it just sort of happened, but I’m glad you like it. Maybe it looks deliberate, then.” He moved away, and scooped up the fat gray cat. “Here’s Artoo, who is dying to meet you, and wishes I would spoil him and feed him eggs.”

Finn hesitantly reached out and petted the cat in Poe’s arms, who instantly began to purr so loudly it alarmed Finn. At Poe’s look, Finn confessed, “I don’t know much about cats.”

“I figured,” Poe said, and his eyes were all crinkled up and it was doing things to the inside of Finn’s chest. “You allergic?”

“No,” Finn said, “at least I don’t think so. I just was never allowed to have pets before.”

“That’s a damn shame,” Poe said. “Well, it’s a big commitment. More of a commitment than I really should have made, with how much time I spend out of the house. I really shouldn’t have two in this tiny place. You’re doing me a favor, giving BB so much attention— I don’t have the time to give them all that they need, and if I leave them both shut in here they fight. It’s been really great for Artoo, to have BB out so much. I’d meant to thank you.”

Finn laughed shyly. “Aww,” he said, “I guess— I’m glad it’s been useful.”

“Oh,” Poe said, as Artoo mashed his face into Finn’s hand, “yeah, just under his chin like— _yeahhhh_ , like _that_ , he likes that a lot,” and his voice had gone low and rumbly and satisfied, and it was definitely doing things to the inside of Finn’s ribcage. Artoo’s head was basically upside-down and he was purring with an unnerving loud rattle.

Finn realized he was grinning like a fool, so wide his face was starting to hurt. Poe looked at him, mouth curved in a smaller smile, and when Finn made eye contact, Poe said, “Are you sure you’re not used to cats? Because you seem to know how this works.”

“Just BB,” Finn said, and he should stop grinning like an idiot, but he couldn’t. “She’s all the practice I’ve had.”

“You’re a natural, kid,” Poe said. He watched Artoo, whose eyes had rolled shut, and then jerked his head toward the center of the room. “Come on, come all the way in. You want something to drink?”

Finn trailed after Poe into the room. “Uh, sure,” he said, and his uncertainty and shyness came up and almost swallowed him. But BB was twining around his ankles, and he knew how that worked. He bent and picked her up, and she crawled up more comfortably into his arms and purred.

“You drink booze, or no?” Poe asked. “It’s cool either way. I probably have a couple beers, I have some grapefruit juice I think, there’s a box of wine but I promise it’s one of the decent boxes, something red, I think it’s a blend with like, cab sauvignon in it or something. Oh, I have some really good green tea in the fridge, I brew it with honey in it, super good by itself or sometimes I put vodka in it.” He paused in his recitation and turned back to look at Finn, Artoo lolling extravagantly on his shoulder. “I mean. Or like. Water? I got a lot of options.”

Finn stared blankly at him. Of those things, he had precisely one in his own kitchen: Water. “I, uh,” he said.

“It’s cool,” Poe said, smiling gently. “That was a lot to throw at you, I get it. I’ll recommend the tea. That’s what I’m drinking.”

“Okay,” Finn said, grateful for the assist.

Poe got a glass out of the cabinet in his narrow kitchen— similar layout to Finn’s own apartment, but Poe’s was shaped a little differently. And his kitchen was just crammed. Everything Finn had fit into the small bank of cabinets above the appliances, but Poe had shoved in a set of wire shelves that were stuffed full of things— pots, canisters, boxes, cans, tins, jars, a fancy coffeemaker, a dish rack. It made the space almost too narrow to walk through.

It was similar to the living room, which was about the same size as Finn’s but seemed so much smaller, partly because of the bookshelves, and the furniture, but also the bookshelves, and the piles of books and crates of books and the bookshelves, Finn had never seen so many books in his life.

Poe cracked ice cubes from a tray into a glass, pulled out the biggest jar Finn had ever seen from his fridge, and poured the greenish fluid into the glass. “Here,” he said, and handed it to Finn. “C’mon and sit on my balcony, you can see your whole yard from a different angle.”

Finn followed him out, and sure enough, there was the yard. Poe picked up his own half-empty glass from the little metal table in the middle of the balcony. The balcony was as crowded as the interior of the apartment, with pots everywhere, some on shelves, some on the floor, some bungee-corded to the railings. The tiny flower lights were lit up as the sun went down; they were clearly solar-powered. “When I first moved in,” Finn said, “my friend Rey went out in my yard and looked at your balcony and guessed that you were a girl. I never asked her why she thought that.”

Poe threw his head back and laughed. “I’m not a girl,” he said, “I just like stuff.”

“I don’t think she was meaning to be offensive,” Finn said.

“It’s the little flower lights,” Poe said. “Someone I work with gave me those. I like them, but they’re girly.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Finn said. “I just thought it was funny, because she’s not wrong about stuff much.”

BB did the thing where she stared at the ground, which Finn knew meant that she wanted him to put her down, so he did. She chattered at him, and slunk under the table, and went to the railing to check out what was in the yard below.

Poe sat down, and Artoo sprawled in his lap, still purring like a rough-running motorcycle engine. “She sounds fun,” he said.

“She’s,” Finn said, and came up short. “Important,” he said finally. Poe gestured to the chair across from him, and Finn sat down in it.

“Girlfriend, then?” Poe asked, tilting his head, but it wasn’t like he was drawing a conclusion, he seemed to just be trying to help Finn match thoughts to words.

“Mm,” Finn said. “Nn. No? More like—“ He paused, trying to think. “She’s. All I have, kind of.” He folded in on himself a little bit. “That sounds weird.”

“It sounds heavy,” Poe said. “But from— Well. I mean, we haven’t had a lot of in-depth conversations.” He gestured a little with one hand, as if brushing something aside. “But I mean. I sort of picked up that it sounds like you’ve. You know. Left some stuff behind and moved on and started over. And that’s great, and that’s difficult, and that’s also likely to leave you a little bit isolated.”

Finn stared at him, wondering, and waited for paranoia to come up, but it didn’t. “That’s it,” he said. “How did— I didn’t think I’d told you that much.”

Poe shrugged. “I pick up on stuff, it’s what I do.” Then he laughed. “I’m also the most oblivious motherfucker you’ll ever meet, though, so don’t be bummed if there’s something super-obvious I’m missing.”

“I won’t be,” Finn said, completely enchanted.

 

 

After that, Finn went up to Poe’s apartment at least once a week; if he went out on his porch and Poe was on the balcony, Poe always invited him up. One of those early times, Poe said, “You know, Finn, I don’t ask you questions not because I don’t care, but because I don’t want to bug you, so if there’s anything you want to talk about, by all means go ahead. I’m just not going to pry, okay?”

“Okay,” Finn had answered, and started screwing up his courage; somehow it was completely different to tell a story like that out of the blue instead of in response to the inevitable question, and knowing the question wasn’t coming made it somehow both higher and lower-stakes.

But Poe clearly had some fascinating and complicated backstory of his own, because his hours got even more eccentric, and sometimes he was gone for two days at a time and dragged himself home looking exhausted. Finn found him once at the front door cross-eyed with exhaustion trying and trying to get the finicky lock to turn.

“Poe,” he said, from the foot of the steps, so he wouldn’t startle him. Poe blinked, and looked at him with an unnerving dead-eyed stare, before recognizing him; light came back to his tired face, then, and he grinned.

“Hey,” he said. “This goddamn lock.”

“I know,” Finn said. “Let me.” He took Poe’s keys and finessed the lock open, then put the key fob back into Poe’s hand.

Poe held onto his wrist for a moment, like he wasn’t sure what was going on, staring at Finn like maybe he wasn’t sure he was real. It was a strange, tense moment, and then Poe shook his head a little. “I haven’t really slept in a couple days,” he said. “I’m not entirely sure you’re real. I’m going to just take it as a miracle that this fucking door is open.”

“Are you all right to get your apartment door open?” Finn asked gently, a little teasing but not really.

“It sticks too,” Poe sighed, and Finn took the keychain back.

“Come on,” he said, and took Poe by the arm, pulling him gently up the stairs.

Poe was warm and solid but somehow much lighter than Finn had expected, and swayed a little; Finn wound up with an arm around him to keep him from falling over as he worked to unlock Poe’s apartment door.

“You gotta kinda,” Poe said, gesturing vaguely, and Finn laughed at him and figured out on his own that the key didn’t work if you shoved it all the way in, you had to pull it out like a centimeter or so before it would turn. It turned the same direction as Finn’s lock, at least.

The cats mobbed them as they came in the door, and Poe made all kinds of incoherent noises at them. Finn set his bag by the door so he wouldn’t forget it, and gently steered Poe to the couch, which was covered in stacks of books.

Poe had even more books than usual, currently, and that was saying a lot, because he already had so many. Finn wasn’t jealous, but. Maybe he could borrow some someday. You could get ebooks on your phone, and he did— he’d been catching up on all kinds of cultural references that he’d missed growing up as he had— but it wasn’t the same thing as holding real books in his hand. But possessions were vanity, and Finn wasn’t completely over that yet, and he also couldn’t get over how many things Poe so incredibly-casually just _owned_.

Poe shoved a stack of books aside so he could sit down, and shoved his shoe off with the toe of his other foot. “Man,” he said, “thanks, I’m okay, you’re sweet.” Artoo climbed up into his lap like he was maybe drowning, and Poe held him and laughed. “I know! I know. Your food dish is surely empty. You might die. Any minute now you might die. I understand, baby. It’s terrible. I’m the worst.”

BB was trying to lead Finn down the hallway. He could see that, in fact, the cats’ food dishes were empty. Poe had been gone a while, that was clear. “I could fill the food dishes,” Finn offered, “so they don’t eat you in your weakened state.”

Poe laughed, and slumped over on the pile of books. “They will eat me,” he said. “Eyelids and lips and fingertips first.”

“That’s gross,” Finn said. He could see the bin of cat food, it had translucent plastic sides. He opened it and found a small container inside, and used that to dump food into the… there were no less than five cat food dishes, identifiable because most of them had pictures of cats or paw prints. Also the fact that they were small dishes placed on little mats on the floor, though some had clearly been moved off their respective mats by the activity of someone four-footed’s attempts to bury them.

Artoo heard the food hit the ceramic surface of one of the bowls and came rocketing off Poe’s lap, barreling straight through BB, who hissed at him and jumped, and Finn laughed and hurried to fill another bowl. Once he had three filled, Artoo stopped chasing BB, and BB settled down at one of them. “Complicated choreography,” he said. But that was why there were five of them.

“Oh yeah,” Poe said muzzily. Finn came over and stood in front of him once he’d shut the dish.

“You should go to bed, not sleep on a pile of books,” Finn said. “Books are for reading, not sleeping on.”

“Yeah,” Poe said, but made no move toward getting up. Finn stood over him a moment, hands on hips, then reached down and took both of his hands.

“Come on,” he said, and pulled Poe to his feet.

“Okay, okay,” Poe said.

Finn had never gone into Poe’s bedroom. He kept the door open, clearly for the cats’ benefit, so Finn had glanced in, but he had a gauzy orange curtain over it (“to keep the food smells out”) so he’d never seen much. Pushing past the curtain felt strangely intimate. The room was even more cluttered than the rest of the apartment, with a thick carpet underfoot and piles of clothes on the dresser and the tiny desk and the trunk at the foot of the bed. There was art on the walls here, too, and shelves, loaded with more books. It gave the whole room a cavelike appearance, but a cozy one, and Finn thought of his plain white comforter and plain white walls and plain white blinds and considered that possibly, he could do better.

“Don’t even look at the mess,” Poe said, a little more awake.

“It looks like someone lives here,” Finn said, a little wistfully.

“Someday you’ll invite me into your apartment,” Poe said, “and I’ll maybe understand why you’re not horrified by my terrible filth.”

“My apartment has crates for furniture,” Finn said, “and nothing in it, and no cats, and no art, and no books— you have so many books, Poe— and no life. It’s not uncomfortable, it’s just not comfortable. You could be tidier but it looks like you’re happy like this so I don’t think you should change it.”He set Poe down on the bed, and Poe looked up at him, sort of dazed.

“Wow,” Poe said.

Finn shrugged. “Do I need to put a bowl of food down for you, or have you eaten?” he asked.

“Ha,” Poe said. “I’ll feed myself. I need to shower before I sleep anyway, I just washed these sheets and I’m not getting in them with this filthy body.”

He did look a little more alert now. Finn considered him a moment, decided against thinking about his body— this was the most he’d touched another person in a long time, all this hauling Poe around, and he wasn’t prepared to think about that any more than he had already.

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” Finn said, but indulged himself, and reached out, putting his hand in Poe’s hair and tousling it like he’d pet BB’s head.

Poe’s hair was cool, his scalp warm, and it felt a lot more intimate than Finn had intended, especially when Poe looked up at him, lips parted in surprise or— something— and leaned in a little.

“Sleep well,” Finn said, more sincerely than he’d meant to, and fled. He remembered his bag, which was good, as it had groceries in it.

 

The next day when he got home there was a small pile of books outside his door, and a note sticking out of the top one. “Everyone should have books,” it said, in handwriting Finn had never seen before but that was somehow startlingly familiar. It was both loopy and spiky. The books were an assortment— a coffee table book of art photos of trees, a murder mystery about a racing horse jockey, a slim hardbound volume with a plain green cover and gold text on it that looked very old-fashioned, and a battered omnibus of science fiction short stories.

Finn moved the books inside to the crate that served as his coffee table, and picked the green one. It had another note in it. “I don’t know if you’re named for this guy,” Poe wrote, “but it seemed fitting.” Finn frowned, and opened the book. It was a very old book of Irish folk tales, or something. An epic. Something translated. The introduction talked about a hero named Finn, so he figured that was why Poe had given it to him, but he couldn’t find the hero in the story inside. It was virtually impenetrable, a ceaseless and mannered catalog of improbable things. He flipped back to the Table of Contents and found that Part II was about this Finn, so he resolved to keep reading at least that long.

Somehow, though, despite himself, Finn got sucked in, and it occupied him for long enough that he almost forgot to eat dinner.

Finn-the-hero finally made an appearance, the orphaned son of an exile, born in secret and raised in the wilderness to keep his late father’s enemies from finding him. By then, Finn the reader was invested enough that he saw it through.

There was something familiar in Finn-the-hero’s upbringing, alone and nameless in the wilderness and with a lot of physical training.

_And they gave him good training in running and leaping and swimming. One of them would run round a tree, and she having a thorn switch, and Finn after her with another switch, and each one trying to hit at the other; and they would leave him in a field, and hares along with him, and would bid him not to let the hares quit the field, but to keep before them whichever way they would go; and to teach him swimming they would throw him in the water and let him make his way out._

Nobody was precisely wicked, and nobody was precisely, entirely good either, and Finn wasn’t entirely sure who he was supposed to be rooting for, but the language got inside his mind and made him satisfied. He eventually had to put the book down, and get something to eat, and go to bed.

It took him a while to figure out what to say, but eventually, lying in bed and thinking it over, he sent Poe a text.

_I wasn’t given a name when I was born,_ he wrote. _Finn was a random name they picked for me until I could come up with a better one, and I never did, and I never knew it was really anybody’s name before, it was just the sound people made to get my attention._

_Did you read the book?_ Poe wrote back.

_I did,_ Finn answered. _Well, some._

_Did any of it make sense?_ Poe wrote. _It’s not— the most user-friendly translation, but I always liked it. It’s sort of pretty in its own way._

_I liked it,_ Finn wrote back. _Once I kind of got the hang of it. It’s kind of a slow start._

_Finn’s a hero_ , Poe said. _I figured it was apt. The name means “shining”, and you do, you shine._

 

Finn tried to return the book, when he’d finished it, and Poe gently pushed it back into his hand. “Keep it,” he said. “It’s yours. It’s your name. It’s your story.” And he smiled, and Finn was used to not knowing what to do, but for once it was a pleasant feeling of overwhelmedness. He got that a lot around Poe, he was realizing.

 

_And a better fighting man than Finn never struck his hand into a king’s hand, and whatever any one ever said of him, he was three times better._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rereading Lady Gregory's "Gods and Fighting Men", which is where the quotations are from. God, what an impenetrable thicket of Victorian Irishness that is! But. If you have a hero named Finn, you should at least glance through the Fenian cycle.   
> And a note: Finn literally means fair-haired, as in blond, but can more generally just mean "beautiful" or "shining", which are both accurate descriptions of Finn as portrayed by John Boyega.
> 
> And the sister whose story I stole for this, and whose apartment Poe lives in, is for really-real named after Finn, the Irish mythical hero, in real life. So I couldn't overlook that kind of serendipity.


	3. Can't Move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bedsharing! and also feelings! sorry. not really sorry though.

 

Finn woke from another one of those nightmares where he was paralyzed, and lay gasping for a few minutes, shivering all over. It was— intolerable. He couldn’t do this. It was inexcusable that he was here, he had no business having survived or— he’d _left_ them, all the ones he’d abandoned, he couldn’t—

He made himself sit up, because he could, because he was alive, because he existed, because he had a right to move.

He wound up on the couch, breathing hard against a need to cry, but he’d been trained not to cry and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t— he was stuck, he couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t—

Footsteps on the stairs broke him out of another paralyzed thought-spiral, and he raised his head, listening. Was it the woman who lived in the front apartment, or was— it was Poe: the door to Poe’s apartment creaked open, and he could hear, very dimly, Poe making noises at the cats before the door thumped shut.

He got up, suddenly able to move, and retrieved his phone from the cardboard box that was his nightstand. Upstairs, he heard Poe drop something.

 _Hey_ , he wrote, and then didn’t know what else to say.

There was a moment, and then Poe wrote back _shit sorry did i wake u up_

 _no_ , Finn wrote back, _nightmare, was awake._

 _Shit_ , Poe wrote back again. _You get those too? Don’t want to be alone?_

Finn breathed in, and out, and he hadn’t been thinking about his breathing and had maybe not been breathing right because it felt really good suddenly. _Yeah_ , he wrote back.

 _Well_ , Poe wrote. _I’m drunk so I’m terrible company but that’s better than nothing, come pet my cats and don’t be alone._

Before Finn could think about anything else he yanked on a fresh t-shirt and went upstairs in his bare feet and basketball shorts, and Poe was standing at the door with Artoo in his arms and a soft look on his face. He shoved the cat into Finn’s arms, and stepped back so there was room for Finn to come in.

Finn held Artoo, feeling the warm soft fur, feeling the solid squish of the fat cat’s body, feeling the rumble of his instant purr, and he was still shaking but he felt so much better already. Poe went and got a bottle down from the shelf, and turned back to look at him.

“Damn,” Poe said, face creasing, “you look fucking awful, Finn. I’m having whiskey, do you want some?”

“Yes,” Finn said. He’d never had whiskey in his life. But if he was going to, now would be the time.

“Ice cube in it, or no?” Poe asked.

“However you’re having it,” Finn said, and sat down, holding Artoo close. Artoo kneaded his paws against Finn’s shoulder, squinting happily at him.

“I’m already drunk,” Poe said, “I should drink this slowly, but I’m not going to. Buddy, here’s a glass of water too, and we’re just going to do this as a shot, okay?” He made two trips, with the two small glasses and two large glasses, and sat down next to Finn on the couch.

Finn knocked it back as Poe did, and managed not to cough even though it burned. He’d been through worse. He drank down the glass of water, and watched Poe struggle to get through his own glass of water.

Poe gave up halfway through, and sat with the cup in his hand, looking over at Finn as Finn petted Artoo. “Did it help?”

“Sure,” Finn said. He breathed in deep, and let it out; he kept forgetting to pay attention and it seemed that when he wasn’t thinking about it, he didn’t breathe right. He breathed in and out a couple more times, and nodded slightly as he collected himself. “Sorry to just— barge in,” he said at last. “I feel a lot better now. Thanks.”

“Oh, no,” Poe said, and slid a little closer to him, pressing his arm against Finn’s. “No no, man. You’re not leaving now.”

That arm felt like a tether to reality, so Finn let himself lean against him, breathing hard against a hitch in his chest. “Okay,” he said. After a moment, Poe moved his arm and put it around Finn instead, so now his ribs were pressing against Finn’s arm, and the warmth went across Finn’s shoulder blades and around his body. He managed a deeper breath in.

“How did— you know about this stuff,” Finn asked finally, nearly whispering.

“I know stuff,” Poe said softly. “Why you think I drink so much? I know stuff.”

“Okay,” Finn whispered. Artoo wriggled out of his arms and got down, complaining, and Finn grimaced; he’d probably been holding the animal too tight.

Poe put his other arm around Finn and pulled him against his chest, turning a little. Finn’s head came to rest against Poe’s shoulder, and he kept inhaling against the hitches in his breath until they eased up. “I got you, buddy,” Poe murmured. “I got you. You’re not alone and it’s gonna be okay. It’ll be morning pretty soon, just you wait and see.”

“When I dream I can’t mm-move,” Finn said thinly, wrapping his hand around one of Poe’s arms.

“Oh, buddy,” Poe said softly. “It’s okay though. You can. You can, now. It’s okay.” He moved his hand soothingly up and down Finn’s arm. “Keep breathing. As long as you can keep breathing it means you won, okay?”

“Okay,” Finn said, and breathed, and it was coming easier now.

“You’re such a good kid,” Poe said, and his voice was low and soft and easy to listen to. “Such a good kid. I’m sorry you have to feel like this sometimes. It gets easier though. I promise it gets better the longer you stay alive.”

“I’m not,” Finn said, and it was hard to speak, “I’m not good.”

“You are, though,” Poe said.

“You don’t know what I did,” Finn said. “You don’t know what I was.”

“I don’t have to,” Poe said. “I don’t have to know, Finn. I know you’re a good person. It’s not complicated.”

Finn sat there for a long time, and finally said, “Okay.”

Poe’s hand had stopped moving, and he sort of twitched a little when Finn spoke. “Yeah okay,” Poe said, taking a deep breath and sitting up a little. “I just fell asleep sitting here.” He raised one hand and wiped his face. “I’m drunk as hell and it’s four in the morning so I’m just going to suggest that you don’t go be alone, just come sleep in my bed.”

Finn sat up, and looked at Poe, who looked bleary and wild-haired and startlingly beautiful nonetheless. He nodded. “All right,” he said.

He didn’t figure he’d sleep anywhere strange like this, but Poe’s bedroom was cozy and soft and smelled of Poe, and Poe was asleep before his head hit the pillow, and BB leapt up purring like a crazy thing to curl herself against Finn’s cheek, and Finn fell asleep with Poe’s arm slung heavy over his waist and BB’s fur soft under his fingers.

 

 

The next morning wasn’t awkward, though Finn had thought it might be. He woke rested, clear-headed, and not at all disoriented; Poe was wrapped around him like a limpet, drooling facedown into his pillow, and Finn easily disentangled himself and went and greeted the delighted cats. He refilled Poe’s water glass and brought it back and set it on the nightstand. He stood a moment, watching Poe sleeping; Poe looked sweet and vulnerable and beautiful. He’d let Finn into his life and into his bed without even asking what Finn was, and it wasn’t fair, and he didn’t deserve Finn creeping on him like this.Finn shook his head, collected himself, and went out onto the balcony to watch the sun rise.

Poe came shuffling out about twenty minutes later, clutching the water glass and squinting. “You _are_ still here,” he said. “I thought you left.”

“Nah,” Finn said. “I will in a minute. I was just enjoying these lil dudes.” Both cats were clustered around him, Artoo in his lap and BB rubbing herself against his foot.

“They enjoy you a lot,” Poe said, and even groggy as he looked, his smile was still glorious. He sat down in the chair across from Finn. “Thanks for this by the way,” he said, gesturing with the water glass.

“No,” Finn said, “thank you for— letting me come up here.”

“Hey,” Poe said, lowering his eyebrows, a crease appearing between them. “When I said anytime I really meant it. I know people don’t always, but I did.”

Finn nodded. “Means a lot,” he said, looking down at his lap, where Artoo was lying with his head upside-down for optimal chin scritchies. He made himself go on. “Thanks for saying nice stuff, too.”

Poe sighed, and yawned, scratching at his hair. “Finn,” he said, “here’s the thing. What you did, whatever happened to you, and what you are— those are different things. I don’t ask you what your deal is because it doesn’t matter. If you want to tell me you can, but you really don’t have to, because it doesn’t matter. Whatever it was, you lived through it, and you’re you, you’re nice to me and you do the best you can and that means you’re a fundamentally decent person. It doesn’t matter, except insofar as recovering from it is still shaping your life. That’s all.”

Finn hunched his shoulders, and then made himself lower them and look at Poe. “I should tell you, though,” he said. “You should make your own mind up.”

Poe shook his head, frowning. “I mean it. It really doesn’t matter.” He ran his fingers through his hair again. “Listen. Finn. Part of my logic here is that if you come clean to me, I gotta tell you about all my shit, and I feel like— right now, I just get to be your sort of cool sort of trashfire upstairs neighbor, and if I have to tell you all about what a fuck-up I am, how I crashed and burned and washed out and the scrap I’m trying to salvage of a life right now— I don’t want to do that, Finn.”

Finn stared at him. “Oh,” he said.

“Everyone has demons, Finn,” Poe said. “I made mistakes that killed people. I don’t know what you did. Maybe it was that bad too. In your dreams you can’t move. In my dreams, I’m falling, and falling and falling. I think sometimes that if I hit the ground in those dreams I’ll die in real life, and sometimes I wish I would. But I don’t, so I wake up, and I keep going, because that’s what you do. You die, or you don’t, and if you don’t, you have to keep going. That’s all anybody can do. If you can make it right, you make it right. If you can’t, you just have to keep going.”

Finn nodded slightly, and kept nodding as Poe finished his sentence. “I like that,” he said.

“It’s just the truth,” Poe said. “It’s just the truth. You’re a good kid, whatever else happened, and you make me want to be a better person too, and that’s all that really counts for me.”

 

 

“I never thought of it like that,” Rey said. They were sitting together on a low wall, high on the slope the city was built on, looking down across the city as it sloped down to the river. It was a beautiful day, and windy; Rey had her hair wrapped up under a scarf, and goggles perched on it, that she wore to keep her eyes safe while she rode her bike. Finn wondered if he’d like goggles like that or not. He didn’t like helmets, but goggles might be okay, or they might not. It was hard to predict.

“I like it though,” Finn said.

“You like him,” she said.

“I do,” he admitted.

“Do you like him like that?” she asked.

“I don’t know what to compare him to,” Finn said. “I don’t know what like that means, out here.”

Rey held out her arms, and he leaned in and she embraced him. “I don’t know what anything means out here either, for what it’s worth,” she said.

Finn nodded, head against her shoulder. He was getting held a lot, lately. He liked it. He liked touching people. “You should meet him,” he said.

“Maybe,” Rey said. “Maybe I will.” She petted his hair. “My shining hero.”

“He gave me that,” Finn pointed out. “For me this name was just a noise for people to make to refer to me. But he gave me that.”

“It was a good gift,” she said.

 

 

“You’re not a trashfire,” Finn said. “By the way.”

Poe laughed at him. “Nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” he said. He was climbing the stairs, and Finn was sitting in front of his door with Artoo in his arms.

“Your cat, though,” Finn said.

“That’s the wrong cat for you to have,” Poe said, making an exaggerated puzzled face.

“He was in the hallway when I got home, and acted like he’s been in exile for a thousand years,” Finn said. “I tried to just bring him into my apartment but he was having none of it, we had to come wait for you here.”

“I told you,” Poe said, and he was just so stunningly beautiful when he laughed like that, eyes all crinkled and mouth wide, “he gets out, and that’s like, all of the plan that he has.” He pointed at Artoo, who struggled free of Finn’s grip and came running to him, crying out hoarsely as if he’d lost his voice howling. Which he surely hadn’t, he’d made perfectly reasonable noises at Finn moments ago. “You’re the reason there are tags on those collars,” he said, scooping Artoo up and cradling him, paws up, like a human baby. “BB actually goes out and comes back and it’s no problem, but you’re the one with no common sense who’d never figure out what to do if you really got out. You’re really the reason that Finn and I met, though I like to fool myself that eventually my personal animal magnetism would have led us to become friends.” He looked up at Finn. “Right? Surely our chemistry could not be denied endlessly.”

Finn laughed. “Animal magnetism,” he said.

“I mean,” Poe said, and looked embarrassed. “You know.”

“I do,” Finn said, “I just liked the phrase.”

Poe smiled at him in a way that made him feel that particular now-familiar feeling behind his ribcage, and stood next to him to get his key into the lock. He managed to get his door open pretty easily, and BB came out and delightedly greeted Finn.

“Hi, baby,” Finn said, picking her up, and she rubbed her face against his face.

“C’mon in,” Poe said to Finn, and Finn had already decided he would, so it wasn’t hard to get himself over the threshold. “How is your cooking project going?”

Finn had decided to master the making of every kind of fried egg, and had mentioned this to Poe at some point. “Oh,” he said, “I discovered that my favorite is sunny-side-up so I’ve just been making those until I get them absolutely perfect.”

Poe laughed. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “You’ll make someone an ideal husband someday, with a mastery of a skill like that.”

Finn paused, right there in the middle of Poe’s living room, and pondered that. He had literally never thought of himself as ever being anyone’s husband. Poe kept walking, but after a moment reversed back out of the kitchen, and turned to look worriedly at Finn.

“I didn’t say something offensive, did I?” he asked.

Finn shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “I just— it had never crossed my mind that I could ever marry somebody. But that’s a thing people do.”

“It is,” Poe said, and his expression was that kind of soft and gentle it sometimes went when Finn said something really odd.

“God,” Finn said, “that was a weird thing to say, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Poe said, “Finn, don’t be sorry.”

“I just,” Finn said, “I don’t always think of myself as a person.”

“I can see how that would cause some strange perspective shifts,” Poe said thoughtfully. Then his expression changed and he looked at his phone. “Oh. Um. Speaking of people, and things people do.”

“What,” Finn asked warily.

“A couple of people from my study group are coming over,” Poe said, “and bringing pizza, and I think you should stick around, at least for the pizza.”

Finn stood frozen with uncertainty and alarm. “I don’t,” he said, hesitant, but, he was already here, was the thing. “I don’t think—“ He paused, and blinked. “I’ve been meaning to try pizza.”

“Dear sweet Christ,” Poe said, “you’ve never had pizza?”

“No,” Finn said slowly.

“It is so, so important,” Poe said, “that you have pizza, and even if you don’t like it, it is so important.”

Finn laughed. “Fine,” he said, feeling reckless; Poe thought they had chemistry, and animal magnetism, and if that wasn’t some kind of connection Finn didn’t know what it was. He was a person and he could have a connection with a person. And maybe that meant meeting strangers, but how could that go wrong, with Poe? “Fine, I will eat pizza with your. Uh. Study group. What do you study?”

 

It turned out that Poe was in graduate school. He was self-conscious about the fact that he was older than almost everyone else in the entire program, and made some allusions about having to scramble for a new career and it was all kind of a mess, and some of the study group people he didn’t know that well but some he’d hung out with quite a bit and they knew his whole tragic backstory— when Poe pronounced it, it sounded like there were capital letters, Tragic Backstory— and Finn realized at that point that they’d probably ask him about his own story.

“Should I tell you my Tragic Backstory so that it’s not a surprise when they ask me?” Finn asked, trying not to curl his arms in nervously.

“You don’t have to tell anybody your Tragic Backstory,” Poe said. He was apparently trying to clean the apartment, and this mostly involved stacking the boxes of books on top of each other, and shoving the assorted knickknacks around the living room into the bedroom. “You can make something up, you can claim it’s Top Secret, or you can just say I’d rather not get into it right now, and that should be enough, and if it’s not I’ll give them noogies.”

Finn was standing on the couch with a long-handled thingy with an orange kind of mop head on the end, sweeping for cobwebs in the corners. There weren’t any, really; the apartment was cleaner than Poe seemed to think it was. “I’d rather not get into it right now,” he said, trying it on for size. It was a novel concept; people could ask and he could choose not to answer. “Well,” he said, and then repeated it, because it was such a good line. “As it happens, I’d rather not get into it right now.”

“You don’t have to tell people things,” Poe said. “It’s not even rude. I have this deal, where I don’t talk about my personal tragedies in front of people I don’t know all that well.”

“Really?” Finn said.

“No,” Poe said, and laughed. “But it’s a good line for you, don’t you think?”

“I have this deal,” Finn said, testing it out.

“It’s totally valid,” Poe said. “I mean, if you feel like hashing it out— I just feel like it’s probably a dramatic enough story that it’s all anybody’s going to want to talk about.”

“People usually just sort of say _oh wow_ and change the subject, actually,” Finn said. “I think it’s bad enough that it ventures into the sort of thing people don’t like to discuss.”

“Do they say stupid shit about how brave and inspirational you are for surviving?” Poe asked.

“Mostly no,” Finn said. “They don’t even get that far into it.”

“Huh,” Poe said. “I used to get that one. I don’t anymore. Not with the more recent shit. You’re right, now I think of it: if it’s bad enough people just sort of clam up or change topic.”

“Yeah,” Finn said. He hopped down from the couch. “You don’t have any cobwebs, I don’t know what you’re on about. This place isn’t dirty at all.”

“You should’ve seen the cat vomit I cleaned up this morning,” Poe said, sounding haunted. “Can you help me get this box onto that filing cabinet?”

“There’s no room on that filing cabinet,” Finn said.

“Says you,” Poe said. Together they managed to get the box up, and Poe shoved at the other things on the cabinet, and by some miracle nothing fell off, and then a buzzer sounded that made them both jump. “Fuck,” Poe said, “I’ve told everyone to text me, I hate that fucking buzzer.”

“I didn’t know it made that noise,” Finn said. “Is that the doorbell?”

“It is,” Poe said. He went to the door, and down the stairs, and Finn was suddenly consumed with nervousness and almost felt like throwing up. But he didn’t, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water and drank some of it and felt better.

There were four people who showed up: Jess, a young Asian woman, Snap, a heavyset white man not quite Poe’s age but close, Iolo, a striking-looking young man, and Bastian, a young Black man. They were all boisterous and easy with Poe, casually insulting him as if they knew him well. Finn was used to that kind of banter, but it was odd being on the outside of it.

Pizza, also, was worth the experiment. Finn was extremely careful not to take more than his share of it, but he ate every scrap of his fair share.

Sure enough, basically the first thing anyone said to Finn was when Iolo said, “So what do you do?” and Finn mentioned the legal aid organization he was working with, and Iolo said “oh you’re a lawyer?” and Finn said “no, I’m involved in a— project,” and there was a moment, and it was then that Finn summoned the visceral memory of the way the corner of Poe’s mouth would crease when he smiled, and reached deep inside himself and said, “You know, it’s a really complicated thing, and it’s just easier not to get into it in any depth.”

“Oh-ho,” Iolo said, raising both eyebrows, and glanced at Poe, and Poe shrugged.

“I don’t know, man,” he said, “me and Finn have a policy where we just talk about cats mostly.”

Finn saw it then, he saw how the other three all gave Poe a look that was unmistakably pitying, and Snap said, a little awkwardly, “I guess that’s understandable, huh?” and Poe went a little tight around the eyes and smiled sharply and said “Yeah.”

“We gotta get the outline for this project done, guys,” Bastian said.

“Should I leave you to it?” Finn asked.

“No, no,” Poe said, and the others joined in, “it won’t take us long.”

It was something they were going to have to research and present, about the specific effects of a particular piece of legislation on a particular field. Finn thought about leaving anyway, but was interested despite himself, and pointed out a potential flaw in the piece’s structure before they’d spent too long outlining it.

“What’s your undergrad degree in?” Jess asked, looking genuinely interested.

“I don’t have one,” Finn said. “I’m only halfway through my first year at school.”

The others looked shocked by this, but Finn was used to that. “How old are you?” Snap asked, frowning.

Finn shrugged. “Twenty-three,” he said, and didn’t add that it was only an estimate. “Like I said, it’s complicated.” But it was easy to say, and he said it with a smile and a breezy shrug, and they all nodded.

“Well,” Jess said, “if you already know this much, you could probably get a degree in whatever you wanted, in a whole lot less than four years.”

“That’s the plan,” Finn said, and it was easy enough to try on arrogance for size, he’d seen enough of it. It was kind of nice, to be enough of a person to fill it out convincingly.

Poe looked— proud of him, that was what it was, and Finn winked at him. Poe hadn’t seen any of this before, he didn’t know what Finn could do. He didn’t know what Finn was. And in this context, it was easy enough for Finn to believe that it really didn’t matter.

 

It did matter, though. On some level, surely, it mattered. Because everything mattered. Finn left, with a lot of cheerful goodbyes, while they were still working, cleaning up on his way out and taking the pizza box out to the garbage before returning to his apartment. He got ready for bed, and got in bed, and he could dimly hear voices and footfalls upstairs, and he knew he wouldn’t sleep.

So he went out on the porch, and sat there in the dark, and realized that since Poe had his balcony door open, he could hear them even more clearly. It was mostly Jess’s voice that carried, the others being lower and duller in timbre. They were clearly still talking about the project, and Finn let his mind drift, not really listening. But Poe must have come into the kitchen, and there were sounds like the dishwasher being loaded, and then Iolo’s voice came, clear as anything because he was surely facing the door, “—gorgeous, are you fucking him? Because if you’re not I will.”

Poe answered indistinctly, and Iolo said, “What, is it too much of a mystery? Then just ask him what is deal is so you can bang him with a clear conscience!”

Finn realized with a pang of resignation that they were probably talking about him. “Jesus Christ, Iolo,” Poe said, tone rising a little, “he’s a goddamn human being, not a piece of meat.”

“A guy can be both,” Iolo said, “and don’t be coy, he’s precisely your type.”

“I don’t have a type,” Poe said, laughing. “And if I did _you_ wouldn’t know what it was!”

“He’s everybody’s type,” Iolo said.

Poe answered less distinctly, but it contained the phrase “concede that one” at the end. The dishwasher slammed shut, and the sink turned on, and Finn couldn’t hear what was said next. Iolo was talking again.

The water shut off just as Jess said, “—what I think you’re talking about? Like, for real, Poe, are you ready to get back on that horse?”

“Guys,” Poe said, sounding exasperated. “Will you fucking chill out?”

Snap said something, too low and rumbling to make out.

“-- appreciate the concern,” Poe said indistinctly, “but -- nn-- ever his deal is, it’s serious, okay? -- -- asked at-- -- --” He was clearly moving away from the door, but he must have turned slightly, because the end was, “said it’s pretty fucking terrible, so I figure,-- -- -- -- -- --, okay?”

That wasn’t hard to puzzle out. Poe had looked Finn up, and since it was an ongoing case, whoever his contact was had rebuffed him. As they ought to have. Finn was allowed to talk about it if he wanted, but there were whole pages of details he was not allowed to mention. Nobody had thought to tell him he didn’t have to talk about the other parts too, though, until Poe. Who apparently had attempted an end-run around that anyway.

Finn sat in silence, feeling his phone in his pocket, thinking about texting something to Poe. But he knew Poe had stuck his phone in the bedroom to charge. He probably didn’t have it on him. The conversation continued into the living room, all unintelligible now except that after a little bit Jess’s voice rose in a laugh.

What would he write?

It wasn’t that it didn’t matter what Finn was, or what he’d done. It was that it wasn’t Finn’s duty to say.

Or maybe it was that he didn’t think Finn was strong enough to talk about it.

It didn’t really matter. Finn went silently inside, and shut the door behind himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of you darlings commented that you hadn't recognized that it was me writing this story, because there was no emotional devastation. And that comment arrived just as I was getting to the end of this chapter. Ohhhh nooooooo! Well, one must have a calling card, I suppose.  
> On a brighter note, I do have a possible arc to end this, so it's not just ceaseless wandering in the wilderness here.


	4. Price of Admission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think at this point it’s moved from respecting boundaries to just pointlessly keeping secrets,” Finn said.

  
  


Finn’s heart pounded as he pressed himself against the wall beside his door. Who knew he lived here? Rey knew. She wouldn’t knock without texting first. If he called out, they’d know he was really here. He had to find out who it was without speaking, but there was no peep hole or window or-- 

He’d been asleep, which was why it didn’t immediately sink through to him that whoever this was who was knocking on his apartment door hadn’t needed him to open the front door. He let his breath out slowly as the realization came to him, and said, “Poe?”

“Yeah, it’s me, buddy,” Poe said. “I was just thinking maybe you weren’t home.”

Finn tried to compose himself, and opened the door slowly. “I was asleep,” he said. 

“Shit,” Poe said, frowning, “sorry. I thought-- I didn’t mean to wake you up. I should have texted first.” And then he sort of grimaced.

Finn rubbed his face. He hadn’t answered the last couple of Poe’s texts. He just hadn’t known what to say. He’d figured it could wait until he sorted things out in his own head.

“Nobody knocks on my door,” Finn said. “It’s. Sorry. You freaked me out. I need a minute.” He stepped back, and waved a hand. “Come in, it’s worse if you stay in the hall.” He was too frazzled to be polite. 

“Sorry, man, sorry,” Poe said, and came in and shut the door behind himself. “You-- are you okay?”

“I haven’t been all that well, no,” Finn said. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” 

“Buddy,” Poe said, concerned. And Finn could feel him looking around the apartment, noticing the bare walls, noticing the sole chair and the sofa made of folded blankets on a couple of pallets, noticing the total lack of bookshelves and belongings, the salvaged carpet, the thrift-store table. He’d never been in here before, and Finn had sort of told himself that it was because it didn’t matter, but it mattered, because everything mattered, and he’d been deliberately avoiding giving Poe any reason to come down here and see this.

Finn didn’t have it in him to be kind. “When you tried researching me they didn’t tell you about my post-traumatic stress and tendencies toward paranoia?”

Shock gave way to guilt across Poe’s face, and then his features drew in a bit, perhaps toward puzzledness or indignation. “I didn’t research you,” Poe said, annoyed, “I asked one person if there was anything I ought to be aware of so I didn’t upset you.”

“Why not ask  _ me _ ?” Finn asked. “You have an unprecedented opportunity to perhaps be the first person in my entire life who’s ever trusted me to speak for myself, and you waste it by telling me not to speak at all.”

“I didn’t tell you not to speak,” Poe said. “I told you that you didn’t have to say anything you didn’t want to. I figured you were probably as tired of being defined by your trauma as I was. I’m sorry if I was projecting too much there.”

“That’s what you’re sorry for,” Finn said, impassive. 

Poe stared at him. All at once the hardness in his face gave way, and his eyes turned downward. “You’re right,” he said, quiet. “I’m sorry I asked someone else about you after telling you I didn’t care. I should have trusted you to tell me if there was anything I needed to know.” He raised his eyes back up to Finn’s, and his mouth pulled tight. “I’m sorry. I thought better of it as I did it, and when she said she couldn’t tell me anything, I thought it was just as well.”

“She must have told you something,” Finn said. 

“She said it was bad and it was still ongoing and it wasn’t anything she could discuss,” Poe said. “And that I of all people should know better than to pry.” 

_ God damn it _ , Finn thought, but Poe’s jaw was managing to be even more noble than usual. “And you came down here just now to ask why I wasn’t answering your texts,” he said, discarding about seven useless other responses. 

Poe’s gaze flickered, eyebrows pulling in a little. “No,” he said. He put his hand into his jeans pocket, and pulled out a key. “I came here to ask you if you could check on my cats while I’m out of town this weekend.”

Finn looked at the key, substantial and silver between Poe’s tapered fingers. His skin was just dark enough that his nail beds were pinker than the skin of his hands, but not so dark that his palms and the backs of his fingers were notably different in pigment. 

Finn had worn gloves, most everyone had worn gloves almost all the time, so he wasn’t used to these little details of other people. He stared at Poe’s hand and thought about how determined he’d been, when he’d first gotten out, that he was going to  _ live _ . How he’d ripped his gloves off and promised himself he’d never put them back on.  

“I’d noticed you weren’t replying to my texts,” Poe went on in a moment, “but I hadn’t really thought anything of it beyond vague worry that you might not be feeling well. I’m sorry. If I’d picked up that something was wrong I’d’ve tried to talk it out before now, not let it go so long.”

Poe lowered his hand, closed his fingers around the key. “I definitely wouldn’t have come over here pounding on your door to demand a favor. I’m sorry for that, too; I didn’t realize that would alarm you so much, but I do know what it’s like to be messed-up over stuff people don’t expect you to be.” He took a step backward. He was turning to go. 

“Wait,” Finn said, and set his jaw. He had to know, though. “Who did you ask?”

Poe blinked at him. “I,” he said. “Oh.” He hadn’t been expecting that. “Kaydel Connix.” She was one of the administrators in the legal aid society Finn worked with. “I know her socially. I was talking to her and it came up that we both knew you.”

“Oh,” Finn said. “You didn’t—“

“I didn’t seek her out,” Poe said. He tilted his head slightly, eyebrows pinching together. “I figured she’d told you that I asked.”

“No,” Finn said. He sighed. “I didn’t know until pretty recently that if I sit on my porch and you stand there and talk to someone while loading your dishwasher, I can’t actually avoid pretty much hearing every word. And I didn’t think it’d matter, but then I heard you telling Iolo about that, and I figured I’d better go inside. So I did.” 

Poe stared at him, and suddenly he just looked so tired. “They’re generally nice people, that crowd, and they mean well, but.” He sighed. “I don’t remember what else Iolo said but it was probably something offensive about your ass, so I apologize in general for all of that.”

“I didn’t mind that part,” Finn said. 

Poe’s eyebrows went up, and he looked back at Finn instead of some thousand-yard-distant section of the wall. “Oh? Well, he asked for your number, but I refused to give it to him. I can give you his, it would make his day, but I should warn you, he’s constitutionally incapable of not flirting with anything that breathes.”

It was suddenly funny, and Finn didn’t laugh, but something in his chest unlocked. “I don’t want to date Iolo,” he said, “but I’m flattered. I’ve never been anyone’s type before.”

Poe gave him a goggle-eyed look, a little of his customary animation coming back to his face. “Okay I was committed to the idea of not asking you anything about your past but I am going to fruitlessly speculate on the possibility that you were raised by  _ blind monks _ .”

Finn’s mouth curled a little on one side without his conscious input, and he pulled his lips in against the sour feeling of it. “I think at this point it’s moved from respecting boundaries to just pointlessly keeping secrets,” he said. 

Poe let out a bark of laughter, and his face creased up in a wry twist. “I think you’re right,” he said. But he really, genuinely looked pained. Finn remembered his promise to himself about living, so he let himself put his hand on Poe’s shoulder, right near his neck, and turn more fully toward the other man. 

“Your pain is not the price of admission to my truth,” Finn said. “You don’t have to tell me anything because I tell you everything.”

Poe’s mouth opened slightly, like he was maybe going to argue with that, but he didn’t say anything, just stared at Finn with some unreadable kind of vulnerability softening his face. 

“But I should also say, it’s not likely that whatever you have to tell me is really going to shake my opinion of you that much,” Finn went on. “I’ve been mad at you for two days and it hasn’t really managed to shake my opinion of you in any significant way, and I thought what you’d done was way worse than what you really did.”

Poe was sort of starting to look like he’d maybe been shot, in slow motion or something, with the open mouth and blank eyes, so Finn put his arms around him and pulled him into an embrace. Poe’s arms came around his waist almost immediately, and Poe laughed into his shoulder. 

“You’re something else, Finn,” Poe said, squeezing him, and then he loosened his arms and rocked back as if to pull away. Finn decided not to let go, and Poe subsided immediately, sliding his arms back around Finn’s waist. 

“You’re the one that told me that,” Finn said. “You’re the one that told me who I am and what I’ve done were different things. You’re the first person who bothered to mention it.”

Poe laughed, soft and intimate, his breath warm on Finn’s neck. “I stole that line from a therapist,” he said.

“I’ve spent time in therapy,” Finn said. “They never told me anything I really felt like I could believe.”

“I’m a damn sight less trustworthy than a professional,” Poe said. “Finn, this is too long a hug.”

“You know I’ve had actual formal instruction in hugging,” Finn said. “This isn’t a hug, it’s a tender submission hold. I’ve had instruction in those too. Well, not tender ones. I’m innovating this as I go.”

Poe laughed harder, still quiet, but more of the resistance went out of his body, and he was really holding on now. “I’ve been in a real submission hold,” Poe said. “I like this better.”

“Same,” Finn said. 

“Can we get drunk before we talk about heavy shit?” Poe asked Finn’s neck.

“No,” Finn said. “No, we’re not building this up any further than it is.” But he let go, just a little, and Poe stepped back slightly. He kept his hands on Poe’s shoulders for a moment, not quite ready to relinquish his hold. He was cold, all down his front, where he’d gotten used to the warmth of Poe’s body. Poe looked a little pink, in the cheeks, but more alive than he’d seemed before, and he was smiling, just a little. 

Finn let his breath out in a long sigh, and Poe said, “Well, I wasn’t doing anything tonight but packing, and I don’t want to, so--”

“It doesn’t have to take long,” Finn said. “I’ll tell you the short version: I escaped from a cult that I was either born into or indoctrinated into as a very young child. We don’t know where I was born or who my parents were, I don’t have a birth certificate, they can only estimate my age at 23 from my teeth and a few developmental markers like my bone structure.”

“Oh,” Poe said, and sat down on the sort-of couch with a remarkable lack of hesitation. His face wasn’t blank at all: he looked up expectantly, looking keenly interested. 

“I was raised to be a soldier,” Finn said, “and wore a uniform my entire life. The uniform had gloves and a helmet that included a face shield. We almost always had to wear the gloves, and frequently wore the helmet. We were trained in live fire exercises from a very young age. I’m a very good shot. I had no exposure to any other systems of beliefs but theirs, but when they tried to make me kill a man, I decided on my own that I was not going to do that, and I left at my first opportunity.”

Poe’s mouth opened slightly in astonishment, mixed with something Finn couldn’t place. He rocked back a little in his seat. “Wow,” he said. “You just-- wow.”

Finn frowned at him. “Which part of that are you reacting to?” he asked. 

“You came up with your own moral code,” Poe said. 

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Finn said. “But, yes, I decided on my own that there was something wrong in what they were telling me, and that I couldn’t take lives just because they told me to.”

“Still,” Poe said.

“They told us a lot of things,” Finn said. “I wasn’t a blank slate. I noticed that their message was inconsistent. I didn’t have the training to pick it apart but I had the instinct to realize I needed to. I’ve put in a lot of work since then trying to come up with a moral code. I didn’t just--  _ do  _ that.” 

“No, no,” Poe said. “But that’s.” He breathed out. “I bet they didn’t just let you go.”

“No,” Finn said. “I had to escape. I had to leave behind a lot of people I would have liked to save. They’re still there and they’re under even stricter controls because of me, I know that. All I can do is work on the case here, a thousand miles away from anyone who knows about it. And I don’t know that we’ll save anybody, really.”

“They’re working on breaking up the cult?” Poe asked. 

“They’re working on-- I don’t know,” Finn said. “The best they can hope for, I think, is cutting off their funding, maybe prosecuting some of the leadership, or at least-- I’m not sure what they really can do. It’s a pretty big organization, and well-insulated from the rest of the world, with some powerful allies on the outside.”

“You’re talking about the First Order,” Poe said softly, looking down at his hands. 

“How do you know that?” Finn demanded, once his jaw had unfrozen enough for him to speak.

“I’ve seen the full-face helmets,” Poe said. He shook his head slightly. “I never would have guessed they were hiding--  _ children _ .”

“When have you seen them?” Finn asked. It felt like something sharp had gone right through his ribcage.

“It’s a long story,” Poe said, “but I used to be-- I’ve been a lot of things, in my life, and one of them involved a covert mission for General Organa to find out what happened to her son.”

Finn had heard the name Organa before, but he couldn’t place it. He shook his head a little, frowning.

“Her son had taken the name of Kylo Ren,” Poe said, very quietly, and Finn couldn’t help but flinch. “I thought you might know that name.”

Finn swallowed hard, and sat down on the other end of the pallet-couch. “I’m not allowed to talk about him,” he said. “He’s-- it’s ongoing.”

Poe laughed softly, but it was unmistakably bitter. “Neither am I,” he said. He reached over, and Finn took a moment to recognize the fist-bump gesture. He laughed, and completed the gesture. 

“I wish I could tell you, then,” Finn said, “because you’d understand. But I can’t.” He rubbed his face. “So you already-- know what the First Order is.”

“I do,” Poe said. “I do.” 

“Then,” Finn said, and stopped, because he didn’t know what else to say. 

“Hey,” Poe said, and moved to sit closer to him, putting his arms around Finn again and pulling him in. “Then that means I believe you and I know you’re not making any of that up. How long have you been out?”

Finn shivered, and went lax in Poe’s grip. It felt like a huge weight being lifted, but also sort of like being untethered. “I,” Finn said. “Uh. It’s. Almost a year.” He had to collect his thoughts into words. “They had to. What’s the word. Deprogram me? De, something.”

“Teach you how to pretend to be normal,” Poe said. 

“Yeah,” Finn said. “That.” He shivered again. Why was he cold? “Me and Rey, both of us. She had-- a different kind of experience, but.” He breathed in, let it out. “At least she knows. Sometimes I feel like. The-- the lawyers, and--”

“They don’t really know,” Poe said. His heartbeat was steady, if a little fast, in Finn’s ear, and his breathing was deep and even, and his scent was familiar now, somehow, and comforting. “They mean to believe you, but they don’t really know, so they’re not capable of actually believing you.”

“Yeah,” Finn said quietly. 

“I believe you,” Poe said. “I was never-- on the inside, but I saw it. I know it was true.”

“What did you see?” Finn asked. 

“I can’t-- talk about it,” Poe said. “Even now. I demob’d out of the armed forces a little over a year ago but there’s stuff I’m still under oath not to discuss.”

“Is that why?” Finn asked, raising his head to look at Poe. 

“What?”

“Is that why you left?” he asked. “The mission to the First Order?”

“No,” Poe said, “no, that was-- a couple months before that. That mission went-- I mean, not well, but I didn’t fuck it up. I got more or less thrown out later for an accident I kind of caused that killed a couple of my own guys.” He looked pained. 

Finn remembered, then, what he’d said. “I didn’t mean to ask you about it,” he said. 

“It’s all right,” Poe said, “you sort of actually understand, so it’s less shitty than when I usually have to explain it.”

Finn laughed, then, a kind of thin and watery laugh. He still couldn’t cry, he’d had it programmed out of him so young, but he was starting to recognize when it ought to happen. “We have a lot in common,” he said. 

Poe laughed too, and said, “Yeah, but you spent this year learning to be a person and I spent it trying to forget how to be a person, so.”

“You knew in the first place,” Finn said. 

“I guess,” Poe said. He sighed, and let go of Finn, sitting back a little. “Well. If you need a disaster mentor, I’m here to show you all the things not to do.” 

Finn rubbed his face and collected himself a little. “I guess,” he said.

“For starters,” Poe said. “Come on upstairs, I will make you spaghetti and we can get good and drunk.”

“I think the drunk part is a bad idea,” Finn said. They’d cautioned him against it, told him it was a terrible coping mechanism. 

“That’s my job,” Poe said. “To show you what not to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was like, doing this without any pressure or whatever, and then I got all worried I wouldn't make tonight's update, and ugh. Anyway.   
> I just came up with a super-killer Mega Plot Point and all kinds of like... a way to make this an enormous long novel. Which is not the point of this. So. Be advised. In writing this, I briefly embarked upon a subplot that would have yielded an action thriller novel.   
> No.  
> But maybe I'll post an outline as an outtake.   
> When people ask writers _where do you get your ideas_ I kind of want to crawl under a bed and stay there.   
>  (Free plotbunny to a good home: what the fuck does it mean that they can't discuss Kylo Ren! Where is he and what is he doing? Rey even now is sweeping both apartments for bugs. The government is involved!)  
> (No.)
> 
> So, in short. You are free to speculate and wonder and get excited about all the details of the plot, deeper into the backstories and what could the future hold given all these crazy details. I'm sort of there with you. But I'm not writing that story. I'm trying to wrap this up in another chapter or two.


	5. Acquired Taste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe's twentysomething dating game is way nicer than Finn's best day ever, is the problem.

 

“One bottle of wine between the two of us,” Finn said firmly, holding Artoo against his shoulder while the little creature made motorcycle noises.

“You are such a killjoy,” Poe said, screwing a tool into the neck of the bottle with practiced ease.

“You can’t think,” Finn said, “that I spent six months in a rehabilitation facility learning how normal healthy people socialize, and didn’t pick up on the fact that it’s apparently quite easy to develop an unhealthy reliance on alcohol?”

Poe paused, the tool entirely seated in the bottle’s fastening. “Hm,” he said. “Point.” He pushed the handles of the tool down, neatly extracting the cork, and then fished down a pair of stemmed glasses, holding them up to the light to examine them for something, dust or cracks, Finn didn’t know. “You know that doesn’t happen instantly, though,” he went on.

“I know,” Finn said. “But I also know that you’re supposed to practice drinking alcohol if you want to figure out its effects on your body, and I really haven’t. So, I’m going to beg you to indulge me, and keep it slow, because I also don’t want to have to babysit your drunk ass.” He was finding ways to avoid saying that he was worried about Poe’s alcohol consumption, because he honestly didn’t know whether the man had a legitimate problem or had just been joking about it.

Whether or not it was warranted, he also didn’t want to be worrying about it all night. 

“Another point,” Poe said, gesturing at him with the tool, the wine’s cork impaled on it. He set it aside, and poured the glasses about a quarter full, and handed one to Finn, then clinked their glasses together. “Well, then, I’ll try to drink this slowly.” 

He already had a pot of water on the stove to boil. Now he set to poking through the containers on various of his shelves. Finn was leaning in the doorway, having been assigned the important task of keeping Artoo amused. Artoo was deeply pleased by this, and willing to be petted with only one hand as long as he was held high enough to watch what was going on in the kitchen.

“I appreciate the concession,” Finn said, and took a very cautious sip of the deep red substance in his glass. It was intensely flavored, kind of sour, a little sweet, and weirdly physically-dry in a way that felt like it was sucking moisture out of his tongue. Poe was watching him, and smiling slightly. 

“It’s an acquired taste,” he said. “If you hate it, I have plenty of other things.”

And then Poe would drink the entire bottle, Finn knew. “It’s not horrible,” Finn said. “I just don’t get it. Yet.” He worked his tongue inside his mouth, trying to rehydrate the soft tissues. 

“You can kind of get used to it by smelling it,” Poe said. “The point of wine is that it’s supposed to kind of be… complicated, so there are obvious flavors and then underneath flavors and there’s all kinds of pretentious shit that’s been written about it, and I’ve been drinking it so long I don’t remember not liking it, so that’s about all the advice I have for you.”

“I’ve figured out a lot of way grosser stuff,” Finn pointed out. But he tried sniffing it. It smelled sourer than it was, kind of earthier.

“Sniff with your mouth open, is how they do it at posh wine tastings,” Poe said. “It’s ridiculous, I’ve done them. Like I said, I’ve been a lot of things in my life, believe it or not.”

“Tell me about some of those?” Finn asked. 

Poe had been digging in the back of one of the wire shelves in the kitchen, and produced a red glass jar and set it on the counter. He pulled out a small cardboard box with a little cellophane window displaying noodles, and dumped it onto the counter too, then opened the freezer and started poking through it. “Where to start,” he said. Artoo got too excited about the fridge being open and had to jump down and go twine through Poe’s legs. Poe shoved him off with one foot, absently, and Artoo complained.

“Well,” Finn said. “Where you learned to drink wine, maybe.”

Summoned by so much noise near the door to the balcony, BB came rocketing in through the cat door like her tail was on fire, nearly crashing into Artoo, who hissed, and BB hissed back and ran past. Finn scooped her up and she trilled delightedly and turned to mug smugly at Artoo, who grumbled to himself and trundled doggedly back to get under Poe’s feet again.

“Christ,” Poe said, toeing Artoo off his foot, “I can’t-- you gotta narrow it down. Wine tastings. Let’s talk about how I turned into the kind of posh motherfucker that can pretend he knows what he’s doing at a wine tasting.”

Poe told Finn about attending an exclusive boarding school for high school, on a scholarship, and how fast he’d learned to fit in with the moneyed and privileged kids there, how he’d learned from them all the little tells of table manners and modes of dress, body language and accents, how well he’d learned how to switch his entire aspect to blend in at home and at school. 

By the time the water was boiling, the cats had sorted themselves out, BB gone on to nap on the bed and Artoo reinstalled in Finn’s arms. Finn realized he had gotten used to the taste of the wine and rather liked it. “Oh,” he said, looking at his nearly-empty glass.

Poe laughed. “Sneaks up on you,” he said, “but I’d recommend if you’re not used to it, having a little water to space things out.”

“Only if you do too,” Finn said. “I won’t be babied, pal.”

“Of course,” Poe said, and filled both their glasses halfway with water. He’d found some freezerburned sausages in the freezer, and had browned them in a pan with an onion, and then dumped the jar of what proved to be tomato sauce over the top of them, all before the water came to a boil.

“That smells fantastic,” Finn said. He’d been taught some cooking, but all he knew how to do was follow a couple of basic recipes, and he had no idea how to improvise things. He could only shop from a list, and then use everything on the list to make a meal. He ate a lot of sandwiches. 

“Onions in olive oil,” Poe said, “is like, how you do. It’s just how you do. It smells so good, and it goes in basically everything.” He stirred the sauce, which had started to try to spit itself out all over the stove top, and turned off the heat under it. “I mean. Onions in any kind of fat. Butter, canola, lard, whatever you got.” He looked over at Finn. “Oh, Jesus, don’t look at me like that. Shit. Fuck! This is totally a move. I’m not putting a move on you!”

“What?” Finn asked, pushing away from the door frame in alarm.

“A pick-up,” Poe said. “You know. Trying to get in someone’s pants.” His expression shifted, went into a grimace. “Or. Fuck. Or you  _ don’t _ know. Shit!”

Finn rolled his eyes. “Poe,” he said, “I was a soldier, not a monk. And believe me, dating was covered in their how-to-be-normal lessons. I’m aware.”

“I wouldn’t pull a cheap trick on you,” Poe said. “Not like that.”

“Does that work?” Finn asked. “Just-- cooking for someone? Don’t answer that, I already know.”

“It’s,” Poe said, and stopped. He sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little. “Let’s not talk about my dating life,” he said. He picked up his glass and dramatically slugged down the water in it. 

“It’s probably better than mine,” Finn offered, making a face. 

Poe closed his eyes, shaking his head, and continued to shake his head for just long enough that it wrapped around from awkward to funny. “If they covered it in your deprogramming and reprogramming then they probably covered that it’s fucking complicated,” he said.

“Yeah,” Finn said. He fidgeted with his own glass. “I mean. Everything about being a person is complicated.”

Poe got a plastic basket thing out of a cupboard and put it into the sink, then fished out a piece of pasta with a fork and blew on it. “You know,” he said, “I think I know what you mean.” He bit the pasta, and chewed thoughtfully. “Sometimes I really miss wearing a uniform. It’s a hassle to have to pick out clothes and have them all mean things I may or may not intend.”

“Exactly,” Finn said. “There are days I really have to remind myself that it’s better that I’m dealing with all this fucking hassle. And I do really feel that way, it’s just.”

“When it’s at its hassle-iest,” Poe said, and got down a couple of wide flat bowls from the cupboard, and a pair of forks. “I feel you, buddy.” He yawned. “I have three jobs now, and I’m never going to be out of debt.”

“I’m living on a stipend,” Finn admitted. “I want to get a job but I don’t have any qualifications. So far I’m just working for the legal aid society, doing whatever they need, and it’s a lot, and then I’m taking classes. I don’t know that I’ll really be able to graduate, I was just being cocky when your friends asked.”

“If you can escape  _ them _ ,” Poe said, quietly but firmly, “and come up with your own moral code, and figure out your own path in life, then I have no doubt you can do whatever you really want to do.” He picked up the pot from the stove and poured it out into the plastic basket in the sink. Oh. It was a colander; Finn had only seen a metal one before. 

“I don’t usually feel that confident,” Finn said. What else could the plastic basket have been? Why had he not recognized what it was? It was such a basic thing, with such an obvious function. The steam from the water filled the room, and gave the light coming in a silvery quality, limning the edge of Poe’s face and highlighting again how stupidly handsome he was. 

“Well,” Poe said, “you should,” and glanced over at him. “Take the bottle and glasses over to the table and I’ll dish the food up and join you there.”

“Okay,” Finn said, tearing his gaze away from the curl of Poe’s mouth. 

Poe looked at the table with his mouth set in a strangely taut line, then went over to a sideboard, produced a pair of candlesticks, set them on the table, and lit them with a match. “There,” he said. “Look at this. It’s like-- a cliche fuckin’ twentysomething date night.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Finn said. Poe seemed-- unhappy, or upset.

“No, it’s funny,” Poe said. “I’m inadvertently giving you The Experience. Circa ten, maybe twelve years ago this would have been the height of my smooth courtship ability. Come back to my place and I will woo you with my  _ extremely basic _ cooking skills.”

“And it’s funny because you’re not wooing me,” Finn said, and something in his stomach felt sour and tight.

Poe blinked at him, then laughed, and poured the wine, since they’d both finished the water in their glasses. “No,” he said, “that’s not the punchline. Finn, buddy, first of all, don’t fall for a cheap gambit like this from anybody, let alone me. You are absolutely a deluxe-level wooing target; anyone who comes for you with less than an A-game deserves to get shot down. And second of all I’m thirty-two years old and have better courtship rituals than this now. If I were going to woo you, I’d certainly come up with something better.”

Finn wasn’t sure if he was really supposed to be mollified by that. “What does an A-game entail?” he asked, baffled. 

Poe set the bottle down, and put Finn’s glass in front of him. “Look at me,” he said, “I don’t even have cloth napkins. I own some, but,” and he went off to the kitchen and came back with two pieces of paper towel, and handed one to Finn. “Listen. A-game. If someone doesn’t take you out somewhere amazing and either spend a bunch of money on exquisite food and drink or demonstrate some kind of expert knowledge about some underrated cuisine or other, then you don’t put out.”

“Put out,” Finn said, confused enough that at least he wasn’t upset anymore. 

Poe sat down, and picked up his knife and fork. He sighed. “I’m being a little silly, Finn, but I do mean it. Don’t fuck anybody who doesn’t at least want to be seen with you in public.”

Finn considered that, and started eating. It was really good, in a way he wasn’t used to food being. Food from restaurants had a strange quality he couldn’t quantify, but often left him feeling strange after eating. This tasted uncomplicatedly good. “That disqualifies just about everybody,” Finn said, “except a bunch of people I don’t think are actually interested.” 

Poe gave him another one of those odd soft looks he did sometimes. “It’s hard,” he said. “You just have to meet enough people, I think.” He chewed for a moment. “‘Sprobably harder if you’re fussy about gender.”

“What does that mean?” Finn asked. 

Poe waved a hand, mouth full. “Well,” he said, once he’d swallowed. “Do you want to date men, or women? How into that whole thing did they get when they were explaining that stuff to you in your How To Normal class?”

Finn rolled his eyes. “Oh my God,” he said, “I kept having to remind them that the First Order weren’t Christian fundamentalists so I wasn’t going to be automatically allergic to the concept of gayness. Like, I came out with some pretty fucked-up stuff, but I’d never heard of the idea of Hell, much less the concept that maybe two dicks touching would cast both dick-wielders plus everyone within a particular blast radius who failed to disapprove of them enough instantly into this mythical land of the air being on fire, forever.”

Poe laughed so hard he had to press his paper towel over his face while he vibrated soundlessly. Finally he recovered enough composure to say, “dick-wielders,” in a tone of voice that was nearly a squeak.

“I don’t know,” Finn said, “that’s all I’ve picked up of it. I haven’t devoted a great deal of study to the beliefs of other cults, you know? I feel like I don’t need to become a generalist on this, my specific experience is plenty.”

Poe nodded, wheezing with laughter. “So,” he said finally, wiping his eyes, “you’re all right in principle with the concept of dicks touching one another.”

“I’m all right in  _ practice _ ,” Finn said, and then sighed. “I mean. In theory of practicing. Had I any offers, I’d be all right in practice.”

Poe shook his head a little. “I don’t know why,” he said, “I just assumed you were straight.”

“No,” Finn said, and it was really irritating how hope poked up in his chest. He had to finally admit it to himself: he wanted Poe, he really did, and it wasn’t entirely just because Poe was pretty and paid attention to him and understood him. Poe also laughed at his jokes and made him feel interesting, and all kinds of things Finn hadn’t really experienced before. He had colleagues who respected him, finally, and he’d even bonded with some of the court clerks and such who had no idea what his case was about, as if he were a normal person, but it still wasn’t the same as the way Poe made him feel. “Why, are you?” Surely Poe would have mentioned a girlfriend by now. 

Poe shook his head again, a slower and wider gesture. “No,” he said, “I’m actually bi, which you’d think would really widen the pool, but in my experience sort of doesn’t.” He shrugged. “I mean, it does for casual stuff, but everyone assumes that you’ll cheat on them, so nobody’ll like, seriously date you.” 

“You mean, like… be seen in public with you,” Finn filled in, something twisting in his chest at how tired Poe looked when he said that.  _ I would _ , he thought of saying. But it seemed too forward. 

Poe smiled, small and bitter, and went back to eating. After a moment he said, “I shouldn’t be so dire about it. I’m sure you’ll have better luck with it than me. My problem was that I was being stupid and self-destructive about it anyway. I never gave people a chance to be decent to me, I was using them to hurt myself just as much as I was the booze or-- any of it.”

“How do you use a person to hurt yourself?” Finn asked, not sure if this feeling was uneasiness or skepticism or kind of a creeping horror that he might have an inkling what Poe meant.

Poe shrugged. “You have a bunch of sex you don’t want with people you don’t like who don’t treat you very well, and convince yourself that’s what you deserve,” he said. “It’s the sort of thing that you’d think it’d just be common sense to just…  _ not do _ , but believe me, it’s pretty hard to break the habit. I’ve had to go entirely cold turkey on the entire concept of dating because I just couldn’t stop making terrible choices on purpose.” 

Finn put his fork down, suddenly feeling sick.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Poe said, his smile so small and tight it was not really a smile at all. “I told you, I can absolutely be your mentor in what not to do. Please just-- don’t look at me like that.”

“I don’t know what I’m looking at you like,” Finn said quietly, miserably, “I spent a lot of my formative years with a face shield so I don’t know what my face does all the time.” Poe closed his eyes. “If you think that I’m going to judge you, remember the entire conversation we  _ just had  _ about how there’s not much that’s going to affect my opinion of you, and the entire conceit you have been trying to feed me about my worth as a human not being innately linked to my past actions and mistakes.”

“Finn,” Poe said. “It’s--”

“I know about self-harming,” Finn said. “I know how it works. One of the boys in my squad used to carve lines into his thighs with shards of rocks because the things they made us do had broken his ability to cope so thoroughly. I left him there, Poe, and I couldn’t save him, but do you think I cared for him less because of how he broke?”

“You were children,” Poe said, and it was really obvious that his anger was all inward-directed.

“I had my wisdom teeth out two, three years ago,” Finn said. “I’m not a child now. It doesn’t matter, Poe.”

“Don’t compare my self-inflicted problems,” Poe began, standing up, and Finn stood up and caught him by the arms, holding him just below the deltoid muscles.

“Stop,” Finn said. Poe was clearly on the verge of tears, and Finn couldn’t begin to puzzle out exactly why. The specifics were probably unimportant. He pulled Poe into an embrace. “I’m putting you into another tender submission hold.”

“Fuck,” Poe said, muffled, “this again,” but his hands settled on Finn’s hips, and he was crying, soft muffled sobs against Finn’s shoulder.

If Finn knew how, he’d’ve joined him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry about the self-harm and alcohol abuse mentioned herein. Finn is better at this than that, though. 
> 
> Also my dude made me some elaborate meal and I cannot bring myself to explain to him that I was really really craving cheap pasta sauce with freezerburned sausage and cheap red wine instead, so. I am going to bed still craving cheap pasta sauce with freezerburned sausage and cheap red wine. You're, uh, welcome? I suffer for my art.


	6. Nice Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FINAL CHAPTER.  
> This story does not earn an Explicit rating.  
> The story is complete.  
> There's an outtake and if I can get it together, there'll be a standalone porn epilogue too to reward all those who asked for smut, including myself. But that might have to wait until I complete some of my obligations.  
> update: outtake is [here](http://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/152181712254/found-cat-outtake-mariachi); it's Poe's POV of his return home and meeting Rey.

 

“I don’t _know_ what that makes us,” Finn said to Rey’s ceiling. He had a key to Poe’s apartment on a ring with his own keys. Poe had found a little rubber ring shaped like a hamburger to stick over the end of his own key to make it obvious which key was which.

“You slept in his bed again,” Rey said, “stone cold sober?”

“I wouldn’t say stone cold sober,” Finn said. “I’d had half a bottle of wine, which is half a bottle of wine more than I’d ever had before.”

“If you do the math though,” she said, and consulted her little notebook. Her little notebook had an astonishing amount of information packed into it, all written in her highly individual cipher.

There was a key to the cipher, and she’d given the paper with the key to Finn, and he had it stored in a pocket of his wallet, with a grocery list scrawled on the back for camoflage. They’d said Finn was paranoid, but he knew Rey didn’t even let on to them the full extent of the stuff she still thought about. He should’ve taken a hint from her and lied, but he hadn’t had the reflexes for it at the time.

He should start lying about it, though, because he was still too honest with them. He’d defected, and not long afterward, Kylo Ren had set out on a mission to retrieve him forcibly, but had used the opportunity to smuggle Rey out, and Rey hadn’t been consulted on this but had been remarkably cheerful about it once she’d realized she couldn’t easily go back. She insisted that Kylo Ren really had no intention of harming Finn, but Finn still didn’t entirely believe that.

Poe would understand, but Finn couldn’t confide in him. Legally, he couldn’t. And he wanted badly to know what it was that Poe knew about Kylo Ren. But those doors were all closed off from one another.

“Mm,” Rey said, “a standard serving of wine is 250 ml, which is three units of alcohol—“

Finn had forgotten what they were talking about. “It probably doesn’t matter,” he said.

Rey had been kept isolated in the wilderness at the edge of the First Order’s territory, and had developed a lot of obsessive behaviors to compensate for her extremely lonely upbringing. It was as deliberately different from Finn’s upbringing as could easily be imagined. She’d been intended to be some sort of prophet or sacrifice or something. The majority of the First Order’s beliefs were pretty pragmatic, but there was a weird spike of mystical belief that kind of went right through the middle of it. Finn knew next to nothing about any of that; he’d been trained to stay away from it. Rey knew next to nothing about anything _but_ that; it was about all she’d been given.

“You didn’t have sex, though,” Rey concluded, going back to his sort of scattered recounting of Friday night.

“No,” Finn said. “Lord, if we _had_ , I’d’ve _led_ with that.”

“I know,” she said, a little downcast. “But. I really wanted you to. That’s what I’ve been rooting for this whole time.”

“I feel like if a man confesses to you that he’s had to stop having sexual relationships in his life because they’ve taken up such an unhealthy role in his self-image,” Finn said carefully, “then you’re sort of duty-bound not to immediately set about trying to fuck him.”

Rey sighed. “You’re the expert,” she said.

They both had a good laugh about that, and Finn sat up and moved to rest his back against the chair she was sitting in, so she could pet his hair. “I _wish_ I was an expert,” Finn said.

“So, what, you just kept him in a tender submission hold until he passed out?” Rey asked.

“No,” Finn said. “But I asked if I could help him pack for his trip this weekend, and then asked if I could stay because he looked like he was in a pretty fragile state, and I was feeling pretty fragile.”

“And you snuggled?” Rey asked. She was very, very unused to physical contact. She couldn’t even stand for Finn to pet her hair, the way she was petting his now. Petting Finn’s hair was, for her, extremely intimate, and she’d had to work up to it. But they were used to each other, and she liked it this way.

“We did,” Finn said.

“So he’s your boyfriend, then,” Rey said. “If you snuggle with somebody like that it’s got to mean something, right?”

“It might mean something,” Finn said, “but you’re not someone’s boyfriend if you don’t formally agree to it, I think.”

“Are you going to ask him to?” Rey asked.

“He said he doesn’t date anymore,” Finn said. “It was pretty platonic snuggling, I think. I don’t think he wants to date me, I think he’d’ve brought it up.”

“No,” Rey said, “I don’t think he’d ask. I think he’s convinced himself he doesn’t deserve you. It sounds like he’s kind of down on himself, you know?”

“Well,” Finn said.

“But you do want to,” she said.

Finn sighed. “I do,” he said.

“But you think he doesn’t want to have sex ever again,” Rey said. “What kind of boyfriends would you be if you never had sex?”

“It would be… all right,” Finn decided, thinking that over. “I mean. I would be sad I never got to try it out, but that’s really only a little part of what I want to do with him.”

“You’ve had sex,” Rey said, surprised.

Finn squinted. It was hard to discuss these things with her. “I mean,” he said. “There are a lot of things under that umbrella. I’ve done some of those things. There are other things I want to do. That’s all I mean by that. But I think it’d be more important to me to be with him than to do any of it, either the stuff I’ve done before or the stuff I still wanted to try.”

“I want for you to have all of the sex with Poe,” Rey said. “Just— all of it. I feel like that would be the right thing.”

“I only want to have sex if he wants to,” Finn said, “and only the kind he wants to, and if that’s none, then it’s none. But I don’t even know if he wants that from me. Can we talk about something else?”

Rey sighed, and stopped petting his hair, rolling to her feet and puttering across the room. “Fine,” she said. “If you insist.”

 

They went out to their customary Sunday brunch at the place with the menu with the pictures on it. It was an ethnic food place that was used to locals not knowing how to eat the food, so the waiters had no issue explaining the menu and were used to giving instructions as to how things were meant to be eaten. Both Finn and Rey loved it for that reason. They ate a lot more “ethnic” food than “regular” food since they didn’t know the difference but they knew that the “ethnic” places were more likely to not think you were incredibly weird for not knowing how to eat the food.

They had their customary Sunday adventures, including Finn’s grocery shopping, which was always more entertaining with Rey along to be astonished at the things that were genuinely astonishing that nobody around here ever seemed to notice. And then they went back to Finn’s apartment.

Finn painstakingly assembled the casserole he’d bought the ingredients to make, and she chopped things for him. He was getting pretty good at making recipes that had exactly enough food for two suppers on Sunday, and then packed lunches the rest of the week. It got boring, but it was better than sandwiches.

He put the casserole in the oven and set a timer for an hour. He’d texted Poe asking when he’d be back, and Poe had replied that he didn’t know, probably late. So he figured now would be a good time to go give the cats some attention.

And so Rey met Poe’s cats and apartment before she met the man himself. “I like it in here,” she said, peering around in fascination.

“He has so many books,” Finn said. “He told me I could go through any of the shelves and read whatever I wanted to, but I don’t know where to start.”

“I do,” Rey said, and made a beeline for the shelf of photography art books. She pulled out a pile of them, not in the slightest bit shy about it, and sat on the floor to read them. It only took Artoo about a minute to come over and join her.

Finn picked out a paperback novel instead and went out to the balcony, clicking his tongue for BB. She was sitting on the balcony under a chair, and came running in, delighted to join him on the couch.

“Did you sleep in his bed last night?” Rey asked.

“He told me to,” Finn said, a little feebly. “For the cats.” He looked up from his book. “That wasn’t creepy, he told me to do it.”

“Of course,” Rey said.

He reconsidered his choice. If she was going to keep talking to him, he should get a picture book instead. He set the novel aside and snagged one of the art books from her pile. This one was the catalogue of a museum exhibition of art, and he was soon engrossed.

Rey devoured several big art books, then got up and started prowling around the apartment. “He has a lot of booze,” she said, investigating the glass-fronted cabinet full of bottles.

“I don’t know how you tell if someone’s an alcoholic or just joking about it,” Finn said.

“I’m sure you can look that up,” Rey said. She went and stood in the window sill to look at the tops of the moldings. BB, delighted, followed and jumped up onto the window, patting at her leg curiously.

“What are you doing?” Finn asked.

“I’m looking for bugs,” Rey said.

“Bugs,” Finn said.

“Electronic surveillance,” Rey said. She had checked his apartment for the same thing, and did so periodically.

“I think that’s the router for his Internet,” Finn said.

“I know that,” Rey said. “But I’ve researched it, and if you were going to monitor someone, it’s dead easy to hide hostile devices inside of innocuous devices they already own.”

“Why would someone be monitoring Poe?” Finn asked.

“Because monitoring you is too hard,” Rey said. “Or because he’s still connected to top secret things. He knows about Kylo Ren, you said.”

“I don’t know what he knows,” Finn said.

Rey shrugged. “The fact that he knew the name is enough,” she said darkly. Suddenly she turned and squinted at Finn. “Where did he say he was going this weekend?”

“The city,” Finn said. “Some gig with a band he’s in. One of his side jobs is as a musician.” He checked the timer on his phone. Ten minutes left.

“Hm,” Rey said. “I haven’t checked that out.” She’d already vetted Poe extensively, Finn knew, had verified his identity and dates of employment at his primary job, insofar as she could without attracting comment. Whatever was public record, she knew.

“I really, really don’t think he’s a spy,” Finn said patiently.

“Mm,” Rey said. “Well.” She balanced on the back of the couch, and tested a foothold on the edge of a bookshelf.

“Do not,” Finn said, alarmed.

“It’s fine,” she said, “I can see the shelf’s anchored to the wall, there.”

“What are you even doing,” Finn asked, exasperated. “Come down from there!”

“There’d be access from the fire escape,” she said, pointing at the corner of the rather high ceiling. “I need to get on the roof to really clear this place.”

“Please come down from there,” Finn said. He wasn’t about to attempt to drag her down. They were both trained fighters but she had a lot less restraint than he did, even in play-fighting; he’d learned never to even pretend to arm-wrestle her.

BB was in raptures, wide-eyed and excited; it wasn’t hard to tell that Poe never climbed his own furniture.

“It’s fine,” she said, and managed to scramble up onto the bookshelf without knocking any of the knick-knacks on it down. She sat there, daintily perched, and peered at the ceiling.

“I have to go take dinner out of the oven,” Finn said. “Come down when you’re finished.”

“Okay,” she said, climbing carefully to her feet on top of the tall bookshelf.

Finn rolled his eyes, and went down the stairs. While he was investigating the casserole, he heard the outside door of the building open and close. He paused, straightening up. Surely it was the writer lady in the front apartment. He listened for a moment. If it was Poe, he’d probably react with alarm to going into his apartment and finding a woman on top of his bookshelf.

There were no audible sounds of alarm, so Finn relaxed, set the table, poured the drinks, and finally decided that Rey wasn’t going to come down on her own, so he went up to get her. “I told you,” he said, opening the door, “to come dow— oh.”

Poe was standing in the middle of his living room, overnight bag still over his shoulder, hands on hips, and Rey was still on top of the bookshelf. “Hi,” Poe said.

“Hi,” Rey said.

“We were petting the cats,” Finn said, mortified.

“And reading books,” Rey clarified.

“You said you’d be back late!” Finn went on.

“I figured the people I was riding with would want to spend the whole day in the city,” Poe said, “but they didn’t want to, so we came home.” He gestured. “I met Rey.”

“I hope she had a good explanation why she’s climbing your furniture,” Finn said. “I asked her to come down and she wouldn’t.”

“She’s checking for electronic surveillance,” Poe said. “I can’t blame her, I’ve done the same. I’m more impressed that she put the router back together when I told her it was clear.”

“I still want to look at this filter,” Rey said, holding up something small between her thumb and forefinger. She stowed it in a pocket somewhere, and nimbly climbed down the bookshelf. Poe cringed, but she landed lightly and dusted her hands off.

“I already checked,” Poe said.

Rey squinted suspiciously at him, circling closer. Poe held his hand out. “Nice to meet you, by the way.”

She shook his hand. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “How would you know what electronic surveillance devices look like?”

“I’ve used them,” Poe said. “I used to be involved in covert operations.”

“Oh right,” she said, lighting up. “That’s right. I forgot.” She leaned in. “You need to tell me everything you know about Kylo Ren.”

“I can’t do that,” Poe said.

“Nonsense,” she said.

Finn cleared his throat. “I made dinner,” he said. “There’s enough, if you want to join us, Poe, but I don’t actually have a third plate.”

Poe laughed. “I can bring my own plate,” he said. “I’d love to join you. Should I bring anything to go along with it?”

“No,” Finn said, frowning in confusion, “I made a whole meal.”

“I just mean— it’s polite, if someone invites you to dinner, to offer to bring something, like dessert or drinks.”

“Oh,” Finn said. “But you made me dinner the other night and I didn’t offer anything.”

“That’s all right,” Poe said, “it’s not required. It’s just a polite thing to offer, if it strikes you.” He pulled his shoulder bag off and walked farther into the apartment, tossing the bag into the bedroom. “Hi, Artoo,” he said. “Nice to know you missed me.” He went over to the kitchen, and looked in the freezer. “Like, I happen to have a box of ice cream sandwiches, which I could contribute as dessert, and I don’t have a whole six-pack of beer but I have three beers, so that would make dinner more festive, unless you had other plans?”

“I don’t,” Finn said.

“I love ice cream sandwiches,” Rey said.

“Then I’ll bring them,” Poe said, smiling, and Finn smiled back like an idiot.

Rey was watching them both narrowly. She accepted a beer when Poe handed it to her, and the three of them trooped down to Finn’s apartment.

 

“No,” Rey said, after a perfectly lovely dinner during which Poe had absolutely no difficulty adjusting to her unusually abrupt conversational style and seemed utterly unfazed to have met her while she was climbing his furniture, “I have to go home immediately, and on my own.” Finn often walked her home, but not always; this would not have seemed at all strange except that she fixed Poe with a very pointed look.

“What’s that mean?” Finn asked.

“Nothing,” Rey said, fixing him with a pointed look in turn.

Finn sighed, and slumped down in his seat. “I hope the conversation you had in my absence was productive,” he said.

“It was,” Rey said, and headed for the door.

“Wait!” Poe said, scrambling to his feet. There were only two chairs at the table, so they’d all gone to sit on the floor instead. He got up nimbly enough for a man who’d gotten as little sleep as he claimed to have.

“What?” Rey paused warily.

“Ice cream sandwich,” Poe said, and went to the freezer.

“Oh,” she said, and held her hands out excitedly, flexing her fingers. He brought one over to her, and she took it happily, unwrapping it immediately.

“Eat slow,” Poe said, “don’t get a brain freeze.”

“I _love_ ice cream sandwiches,” Rey said fiercely.

“Safe home,” Poe said.

She beamed, and went out the door. Poe smiled after her, looking fond, then came back in and got ice cream sandwiches for himself and Finn.

“Did she tell you that you should have all the sex with me?” Finn asked, taking the wrapped treat and picking delicately at the seam. “Because she said it to me in exactly those words.”

“I feel like she toned it down for my benefit,” Poe said, but he looked amused, mouth curling appealingly. “All the sex? I like that phrase.”

“All of it,” Finn said.

Poe sat back down on the floor and tore his ice cream wrapper open daintily. “She was both hilarious and honest about it,” he said. “I wasn’t offended, if you’re worried.”

“It,” Finn said, fumbling a little for words, “she seems to either set people off or not.” He contemplated the ice cream sandwich. “I, um. I talk to her about a lot of things because she. You know. Understands. But I sort of underestimated how bad she is at— well, she was kind of raised by wolves, I think is the idiom.”

“Were there real wolves?” Poe asked, looking astonished.

“No,” Finn said, “which is kind of the problem, I think. She was kind of— isolated. If there had been wolves she might at least have some chance at, you know.”

Poe laughed. “Well, she didn’t offend me,” he said. “I think she was a good perspective.”

“Listen,” Finn said, sitting forward on his knees, “I maybe told her what you told me and I know that was told to me in confidence but—“

“She’s a confidante,” Poe said. “She’s your confidante. I’m not going to be angry about that. That’s all right. Everyone needs a confidante.”

Finn sat back a little. “Who have you told about me?” he asked, distracted.

Poe laughed. “I haven’t told anyone everything,” he said. “Eat your ice cream, by the way, it’s going to make a mess if you don’t.” Finn remembered the thing in his hand, and bit it before it melted. “The four people who were in the car with me all day yesterday and today all know that I have an extremely hot young neighbor I’m super-conflicted about and have collectively decided that I should just bang him, even though these are the same people who had been telling me for months that I needed to stop dating entirely.”

“Really,” Finn said.

Poe rolled his eyes. “I promise I presented the issue as approximately as complicated as it really is, and I made a big thing about how unusually innocent and pure and also good-hearted you are, and so on, but by about the fifteenth minute of today’s drive they were all unanimous that I should really just solve all my problems by judicious application of your youthful and pure dick.”

Finn laughed, able at least to pick up on the humor. “I’m not that innocent,” he pointed out.

“Well,” Poe said. “And that was Rey’s point. I’m trying to remember her exact quote because it was brilliant.”

“I bet it was,” Finn said, grimacing.

“No, no,” Poe said, “I mean it. She said something along the lines of, whatever your specific bullshit is, Finn is an unusually competent human so he won’t have much of a problem handling it. That’s not it exactly but it was something like that.”

“You had like,” Finn paused to think back. “Two minutes alone with her, tops.”

“Oh yeah,” Poe said. “She refused to introduce herself. She said I could certainly figure out who she was and there was no time for that, we had to talk about you and I having all the sex.”

Finn couldn’t help but laugh. Poe was grinning, too. “I mean,” Finn said, hopeful. “That means you’re willing to consider it, though. With me.”

Poe licked his fingers, and balled up the wrapper of his ice cream sandwich. “I figured you knew that,” he said. “I’ve been staring at you like a moony lovesick teenager since I first saw you. Mentally rehearsing all the ways it would go wrong, starting with you not being into dudes and ending with you realizing what a fucking trash fire of a person I am.”

“I think we’ve established that none of that is actually true,” Finn said, ungracefully stuffing the last, melting remnant of the ice cream into his face.

Poe smiled at him, like he’d just done something particularly clever instead of what he’d actually done, which was faintly disgusting. (Finn had grown up eating extremely monotonous food with extremely precise and tidy table manners. Nothing he’d ever eaten had tried to melt before.)

“No,” Poe said, “I guess it’s not.” He fidgeted with the wrapper, then got to his feet, taking Finn’s ice cream wrapper from him and going to throw them out in the kitchen wastebasket. He stood in the kitchen doorway, then, looking at Finn. “She made a good point, though, that I shouldn’t patronize you. I’m older and I’ve had more relationships but that doesn’t mean I know anything more of substance than you do, so I shouldn’t act like I can make decisions on your behalf.”

“I cautiously agree with this,” Finn said.

Poe came back over and knelt on the floor, maybe arm’s length away, and Finn stared at him. “For serious, though,” Poe said, “I’ve been fucking pining over you like a ridiculous— stupid person. Was it _really_ not obvious?”

“Not to a man who spent a lot of his life wearing a helmet with a face mask,” Finn pointed out.

Poe squeezed his eyes shut. “Baby,” he said softly, opening his eyes again, and he had that expression that Finn recognized— oh. _That’s_ what that expression was. “Baby, I only want you to have nice things now.”

This whole time, that’s what that expression had been. “Christ,” Finn said. “No, I see it now.”

Poe laughed, and knee-walked closer, taking Finn’s jaw between his hands. “I’m not a nice thing,” he said, “but I’ll do my best.”

“Please,” Finn said, and closed the distance between their faces. He’d kissed people before, but it hadn’t been like this. Poe’s mouth was sweet and slippery on his. His eyes slid shut on their own, and he couldn’t help but make a needy little sound.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Poe murmured, pausing to kiss him deeper— Finn wrapped his arms around Poe’s body, pulling him closer— “mm, yeah okay.”

“I don’t even care,” Finn said breathlessly, “what the details are, I just— want— _you_.”

“You’ve got me,” Poe said.

 

 

Much later, Finn groped around until he found his phone, and laughed.

“What?” Poe asked, lifting his gloriously tousled head to look.

Finn showed him his phone, which had a message from Rey that was just all emojis. It wasn’t even a message in emoji, it was just a random keysmash of emojis.

“You gotta answer,” Poe said.

Finn rolled his eyes, then opened his phone camera, and turned it to the front-facing camera. “Christ,” Poe said, and ducked his head out of the frame.

“C’mon,” Finn said.

Poe moaned, but then tilted his head so that just his hair, forehead, and eye were visible, pressed against the curve of Finn’s shoulder.

Just as Finn was about to take the picture, BB jumped up into the frame with a delighted trill. She started grooming Poe’s hair.

Finn laughed and took the picture, and sent it without a caption.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS for the wild ride!!!!  
> I don't know what in my life was really so bad that I had to ignore all of it to write this entire story in less than a week! But whatever it was, I did it! So. Here it is!
> 
> If I come back and add the smut it'll be as a separate story-- I don't know if you'd get a notification if you're subscribed. But I'll link to it from here and I'll definitely mention it on my [Tumblr.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/bomberqueen17) I know Tumblr is a terrible irredeemable hell site but it's also a good way to get in touch with me. 
> 
> It just feels good to finish a thing, ok? And so I'm not going to get into where Kylo Ren really is, or what Poe's dad thinks of all this, or where Poe was this weekend (that's the outtake, btw), or any of the other stuff. It's just-- here's a story and I tried to keep it short and simple. It was an experiment. It's all one POV and there are no explored side plots.  
> I think it was a pretty good experiment. It's been a fun ride, guys.
> 
> Who am I kidding, I'm going to go write the porn _right now_...

**Author's Note:**

> LOL I'm preserving the original end note below, because it's adorable.  
> Meanwhile-- this is a series now, so much for oneshots! LOL I KNOW RIGHT. Anyway. 
> 
> [[What do you think, should I do a second chapter? Should I keep this gen? I want to write a follow-up with smut, but it struck me kind of recently that I never write gen and should do so. I don't know! I do know I have a bunch of epic WIPs so the idea of this being really short and standing alone appeals a lot.  
> Except of course, that I want to write a bunch of smut.  
> But maybe Finn really just needs a friend. Maybe this is enough. I'm terrible at oneshots, y'all. Those of you who have perfected the art form deserve medals.]]
> 
> Also edited to add: I visited my sister's apartment that I stole for the setting for this, so [here are some photos](http://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/154203741114/so-found-cat-fans-here-are-some-lovely), if you'd like to help your imagination out a little bit. They're some of the worst photos I've ever taken, but I'm not letting that stop me.


End file.
